The Starliner team is confident the malfunctions won’t prevent the spacecraft from completing its mission
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is officially on its way to the International Space Station after 2.5 years of delays.
Starliner got itself into the proper orbit after separating from the Atlas V on Thursday, a huge milestone for Boeing and NASA. After all, the capsule was unable to rendezvous with the ISS during the original OFT in December 2019 after suffering some software glitches shortly after launch.
“Today was just a huge day for commercial crew,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. As he listed the hurdles and launch milestones of the day’s events, he also mentioned one small Starliner malfunction. “The system is designed to be redundant, and it performed like it was supposed to. Now the team is working the ‘why’ as to why we had those anomalies occur,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew program.