Boeing Starliner
Boeing’s Starliner capsule “retested” the OFT-2 mission, which lifted off a little earlier at 6:54 a.m. ET for a seven-day test. OFT-2 is an unmanned test mission. It is expected to dock with the International Space Station in one day and deliver various supplies of about 245kg. In addition to experimenting with the automatic docking system, the Starliner also has a dummy full of probes to simulate what an astronaut would feel like.
OFT is the abbreviation of “Orbital Flight Test”. As early as 2019, Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX have roughly the same content. Demo-1 almost in tandem,Unmanned OFT-1 mission in December, but due to an error in the timing device in the capsule, it not only spent a lot of fuel to maintain a wrong orbit, but also missed the correct ignition point. This puts the Starliner into a stable orbit, but it doesn’t have enough fuel to reach the International Space Station.
After this failure, Boeing stated that it would conduct a “re-examination” of OFT-1 at its own expense, which is the OFT-2 this time, but OFT-2 did not go well.OFT-2, which was originally expected to be launched in early August 2021, becauseUnexpected valve problemdelay, inTried quick fixes to no availLater, OFT-2 was delayed again, all the way to today, almost a year later.
In any case, the OFT-2 mission has finally been successfully launched, and then it depends on whether it can achieve the original purpose of docking with the International Space Station. It’s just like this, OFT-2 is more than three years behind Demo-1…