Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2: Live updates

Boeing and NASA are getting ready to make a second attempt at launching its Starliner astronaut taxi to the International Space Station. The uncrewed CST-100 Starliner space capsule is scheduled to launch to the space station on July 30 at 2:53 p.m. EDT (1853 GMT), lifting off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

This will be Boeing’s second time launching Starliner on an uncrewed test flight; the first mission, OFT-1, returned to Earth early after it failed to reach the space station in December 2019. NASA conducted major reviews of the Starliner program and identified a total of 80 corrective actions that Boeing needed to take before Starliner could return to flight. If all goes according to plan, Starliner will dock with the International Space Station about 24 hours after it launches, and it will return to Earth on Aug. 5 with a parachute-assisted landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

Check back here for live updates on the Boeing Starliner OFT-2 mission.

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2021-07-23T00:18:15.531Z

(Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

The CST-100 Starliner capsule has passed its flight readiness review (FRR) for the upcoming liftoff, which will kick off the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) mission to the station, NASA and Boeing representatives announced today (July 22). Read the full story here.

Over the weekend, engineers mated the Starliner spacecraft to its Atlas V rocket, marking a key milestone ahead of the mission’s launch next week. See the photos here.

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