Boeing engineers are close to resolving concerns with the mass and aerodynamic shape of the company’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew carrier, and officials are optimistic the spaceship will be ready to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station in early 2018.
The first few flights of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew capsule will likely land on expansive desert plains in New Mexico or Utah, according to a former astronaut charged with developing the spacecraft’s operations scheme.
The rollout operation on Tuesday followed a day of evaluations using Boeing’s weight and center-of-gravity machine to determine the final measurements on the spacecraft. Launch is still targeting May 6 at 10:34 p.m. EDT (0234 UTC).
Assuming a May 1 launch, the Starliner spacecraft would dock with the ISS on May 2. The spacecraft will launch on the 100th flight of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket.
A crew access arm was lifted into place at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral on Monday, as SpaceX races to ready the pad for its first Crew Dragon launch with astronauts as soon as January.
NASA and Boeing have penciled in a launch date in February for the first piloted test flight of the Starliner commercial crew capsule, allowing time to implement fixes on the spacecraft after an unpiloted demo to the International Space Station earlier this year.
A Russian cosmonaut, a Japanese billionaire and his production assistant rocketed into orbit Wednesday and headed for the International Space Station for an 12-day visit, the first by paying “space tourists” in more than a decade.