The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Space => Topic started by: Elderberry on September 27, 2017, 01:08:45 pm
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Space News by Jeff Foust — September 27, 2017
ADELAIDE, Australia — Boeing says it is making good progress on the development of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle, but acknowledged the first crewed test flight of the spacecraft might not take place until early 2019.
During a panel discussion at the 68th International Astronautical Congress here Sept. 26, Chris Ferguson, director of Starliner crew and mission systems at Boeing, said the company was in the middle of a wide-ranging development program with development of flight hardware and testing of many different vehicle systems.
“We’re in the thick of testing right now, with the intent of flying at least our uncrewed test flight next year, and ideally both our uncrewed and our crewed test flight,” he said.
In an interview at the conference, Ferguson said that the company’s current schedule calls for a pad abort test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the second quarter of 2018. That would be followed by an uncrewed orbital test flight of the vehicle, launched on an Atlas 5, in the third quarter of 2018.
More: http://spacenews.com/crewed-starliner-test-flight-could-slip-to-2019/ (http://spacenews.com/crewed-starliner-test-flight-could-slip-to-2019/)