Boeing Starliner-1

Boeing Starliner-1, also called Post Certification Mission-1 (PCM-1), is the name of the first operational crewed mission of the Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Commercial Crew Program. It was originally planned as the first Starliner mission following the Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT). However, the CFT encountered significant technical problems, and , the launch date for the next Starliner mission is not known. The flight will launch no earlier than early 2026.

Crew

The initial crew assignments were made in 2018, but the Starliner program has encountered multiple delays resulting in multiple changes in the crew assignments. On 18 April 2022, NASA said that it had not finalized which of the cadre of Starliner astronauts, including Barry Wilmore, Michael Fincke, and Sunita Williams, will fly on the Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission or this mission. On 16 June 2022, NASA confirmed that CFT was to be a two-person flight test, and Williams was assigned to the CFT mission.

On 30 September 2022, Scott D. Tingle was assigned as commander and Michael Fincke as pilot. Fincke was also a backup crew member on Boe-CFT.

On 22 November 2023, Joshua Kutryk was assigned to the mission by the Canadian Space Agency. Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was expected to take the fourth seat.

On 27 March 2025, Fincke and Yui were later reassigned to SpaceX Crew-11.

Due to its delays, several astronauts originally assigned to Starliner-1 were reassigned to other missions: in 2018, Sunita Williams was planned to fly on Starliner-1, but was later reassigned to the earlier CFT. Jeanette Epps was added to the Starliner-1 mission on 25 August 2020 but reassigned to SpaceX Crew-8 in August 2023. Koichi Wakata was officially added to the Starliner-1 mission on 21 May 2021, but then reassigned to the SpaceX Crew-5 mission, which launched in October 2022.

As this marks the first operational flight of Starliner, a Russian cosmonaut is not expected to be on board as Roscosmos has stated they do not want to put Russian cosmonauts on Starliner until it has flown successful Commercial Crew Program flights.

Mission

This mission was intended to be the first reuse of a Starliner spacecraft. That vehicle was initially flown as the first uncrewed Orbital Flight Test mission in December 2019. On 22 December 2019, Sunita Williams (at that time assigned to be commander on this mission) announced the name "Calypso" for the spacecraft. Calypso was used for Boe-CFT instead. Spacecraft 2, which was used for Starliner Orbital Flight Test-2, will instead be flying this mission.

Due to various technical issues during the Boeing Crew Flight Test, including NASA deeming it was too risky to return its astronauts to Earth onboard the Starliner, the path to Starliner's NASA certification has been put into doubt, as it is possible Boeing would need to perform a second Crew Flight Test, which would result in significant delays to Starliner-1.

Notes

References

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