Spaceflight

It's unlikely Boeing can fly all six of its Starliner missions before retirement of the ISS in 2030.

Assuming the investigation doesn't uncover any additional problems, and NASA and Boeing return Starliner to flight with astronauts in 2026, there will not be enough time left in the space station's remaining life—as it stands today—for Starliner to fly all six of its contracted missions at a rate of one per year. It's difficult to imagine a scenario where NASA elects to fly astronauts to the space station exclusively on Starliner, given SpaceX's track record of success and the fact that NASA is already paying SpaceX for crew missions through the end of this decade.

It is noteworthy to mention here that NASA has only given Boeing the "Authority To Proceed" for three of the potential six operational Starliner missions. This milestone, known as ATP, is a decision point in contracting lingo where the customer—in this case, NASA—places a firm order for a deliverable. NASA has previously said it awards these task orders about two to three years prior to a mission's launch.

Blue Origin announced Aug. 23 that it has scheduled the next New Shepard launch, NS-26, for no earlier than Aug. 29. Liftoff of the vehicle from the company’s West Texas launch site is scheduled for 9 a.m. Eastern.

The flight will be the first for New Shepard since the NS-25 mission May 19. While that mission was a success, one of the three parachutes deployed by the crew capsule during its descent failed to fully open. The company noted at the time that the capsule is designed to land with only two parachutes.

“We identified the direct cause for the issue observed on NS-25 and implemented corrective actions that are in place for our next flight,” Blue Origin said in a statement to SpaceNews Aug. 23. “Our investigation showed the parachutes themselves were nominal and packed correctly. We focused on the dis-reefing system that transitions the parachutes from the reefed to disreefed state that did not function as designed on one of the three parachutes on NS-25.”

NET date: October 13, 2024

After months of consideration, NASA said Thursday that it will finally decide the fate of two astronauts on board the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, by this weekend. As soon as Saturday, the two crew members will learn whether they'll return on a Starliner spacecraft in early September or a Crew Dragon vehicle next February.

On the eve of this fateful decision, the most consequential human spaceflight safety determination NASA has had to make in more than two decades, Ars has put together a summary of what we know, what we believe to be true, and what remains yet unknown.

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For a long time, I was pretty confident that Butch and Suni would come back to Earth on Starliner. I trusted NASA and Boeing officials when they said they just needed to test the vehicle a bit more and become confident enough in the data and analysis to clear the crew to come home on the original spacecraft. ... However, as of Friday, my best information continues to point toward a Crew Dragon return as the most likely outcome.

I don't even know what to say about this.