NASA won't make an announcement until weeks or months later, but two sources claim that the space agency is moving astronauts from Boeing Starliner spacecraft onto SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicles for future missions to the International Space Station.
They aren't final. They still need to be approved by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel. However, sources claim that NASA's rookie astronauts will leave the Boeing vehicle because of its continuing delays.
It is possible that Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and Jeannette Eps will fly on the SpaceX Crew-5 mission. This mission is scheduled for launch on a Falcon 9 rocket no later than August 2022. For the mission, they will likely be joined by a Japanese partner astronaut, Koichi Wakata.
These are significant changes for NASA as well as its astronauts. Since August 2018, Mann has been assigned as the Crew Flight Test for Starliner. This pivotal flight will be after Boeing's uncrewed Starliner test flight, Orbital Flight Test-2 or OFT-2. Mann was given the assignment at the time. Cassada was assigned the first Starliner operational flight, a regular rotation mission towards the space station, "Starliner-1." Epps was included in the Starliner-1 mission one year ago.
Kyle Herring, a spokesperson for NASA, declined to confirm any information regarding the new assignments.
Setbacks for Starliner
Sunita Williams, Sunita Wilmore, and Michael Fincke, all NASA astronauts who have flight experience, are likely to remain on these manifests. Sources told Ars that NASA is not content to wait for its rookie astronauts. Mann and Cassada were both from the class 2009 and have spaceflight experience.
Mann's flight was scheduled to take place in 2019 at the time she received her assignment. Starliner has experienced a number of setbacks since then. In December 2019, the first uncrewed test flight, OFT-1 was finally completed. Software errors caused the vehicle to almost crash shortly after launch, and again shortly before it reentered into Earth's atmosphere. NASA failed to clear Starliner for a docking attempt at the International Space Station because of its flight problems. This was a crucial objective of the test flight.
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Boeing and the astronauts who waited for their flights were then hit with a 20-month long process. NASA declared the mission "high visibility close calls" and initiated an investigation into Boeing’s safety culture. This required a major overhaul of Boeing's flight software. Boeing offered to pay $410 million for a second test flight using its own funds. To find errors, the software engineers from Boeing dug through Starliner's 1,000,000 lines of code. They finally tested it more thoroughly than ever before.
Starliner finally reached the launch pad for the OFT-2 mission in early August. Just hours before the launch of Starliner on August 3rd, more than half the valves controlling the flow of dinitrogen trioxide oxidizer through its service module failed. After a delay of a day, Boeing decided to bring Starliner back to its processing hangar for further troubleshooting.
Waiting for OFT-2
Two weeks ago, NASA's chief for human spaceflight operations Kathy Lueders stated that teams of engineers from Boeing and NASA continue to examine the sticky valves issue. Lueders said that a new date has not been set for the OFT-2 mission, but she did suggest that one might be soon. She said that the mission will likely slip to 2022. She said, "My gut tells me it's more likely to happen next year, but we are still working through this timeline."
Sources confirmed that there is not yet a date for the next OFT-2 launch attempt as the valve issue with the spacecraft has not been resolved. This test flight might not take place before next spring, so it is possible that this will not be the case. NASA is not certain that the test flight will be successful and will review the data following the flight. This means NASA has low confidence in when the first crew flight will occur.
NASA believes that the first Starliner crew flight will not occur before 2022's second half, as Mann will be moving from the Starliner Crew Flight Test mission to the SpaceX Crew-5 mission. This is despite Mann's schedule. It is not certain it will happen.
