NASA and Boeing say they are working on the first crewed flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft in early May, which will be the final step before the vehicle is certified for regular flights to the International Space Station.

During a series of briefings on March 22, NASA and Boeing officials said preparations for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission were progressing well, with launch planned for May 1 at the earliest. This schedule stems from the ISS’s manifesto for visiting ships earlier this month, which postponed the mission from late April.

This mission will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suna Williams to the station in the southwestern United States, where they will spend approximately eight days before returning to Earth. The flight came almost two years after the second unmanned flight test of OFT-2, which also docked with the station.

“CFT flight is really about introducing the crew to our vehicle systems, so a lot of our flight test goals are about how that interface will work,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and head of Boeing’s Starliner program. “It all comes down to this: Does the vehicle with a human in the loop operate as expected?”

These test objectives range from the performance of the spacecraft’s life support systems to the use of manual controls to control the spacecraft in the event of automatic systems failure. Wilmore and Williams will test the ability to manually control and steer the spacecraft during a one-day flight to the ISS, as well as test maneuvers during the 6.5-hour journey from the station back to Earth.

“Everything we do from start to finish is a test pilot’s dream,” Wilmore said at another briefing.

CFT will be the last major milestone before NASA officially certifies the spacecraft for crewed flights, starting with the Starliner-1 mission in early 2025. “OFT-2 was the path to crew test, and this crew test is the path to Starliner-1,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.

If there are no problems during the CFT, this certification is expected to be completed in November or December. “This time needs to pass to reach the spring,” he said for Starliner-1. “I think we have a good chance. We just have to stay on the right track.”

Stitch said NASA is continuing to complete several certification points for the CFT, including completing a review of parachute test data earlier this year that confirmed completion of the redesigned “soft link,” as well as the interruption mode, which was a factor in the mission’s delay from last year. . analysis. Neither one nor the other created any risk of further delay. “We’re doing really well,” he said.

NASA still wants to launch the Starliner on operational missions, though it’s behind schedule to provide backup access to the ISS while supporting SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. “We at the station are thrilled to send this first crewed Boeing Starliner mission to the space station,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s deputy ISS program manager. “Our goal was always to have a few different cars that we could fly to get the team out there.”

Boeing is focused on launching the Starliner for NASA, fulfilling a contract signed nearly a decade ago for six flights to the ISS, and is not currently considering other specific missions for the spacecraft, Nappi said. “Special astronaut missions will be interesting in a decade,” he said, but only after operational missions begin.

One of the longest awaiters for CFT is Williams, who NASA has named a “cadre” of astronauts who will prepare for the first commercial missions in 2015. At the briefing, he said just before launch that it “took a while” to get to this point, but he agreed with Willmore that flying this mission was a “test pilot’s dream” for him. “I don’t think I’d really want to be anywhere else right now.”