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All eyes on weather as Boeing looks to Starliner launch on Tuesday - Space.com

All eyes on weather as Boeing looks to Starliner launch on Tuesday - Space.com

All eyes on weather as Boeing looks to Starliner launch on Tuesday - Space.com
Aug 01, 2021 1 min, 14 secs

Weather concerns continue as NASA and Boeing look to launch the Starliner capsule on a vital uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station on Tuesday (Aug. 3).

Related: Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2: Live updates.

In photos: Boeing's Starliner Orbital Test Flight 2 mission to the International Space Station.

The same tricky weather conditions that are worrying launch personnel also prompted the mission team to roll Starliner and its Atlas V rocket back inside from the launch pad, where it had arrived on Thursday (July 29) in preparation for a Friday (July 30) launch.

Although weather conditions were also a concern for that launch date, the mission was postponed after the International Space Station spent about 45 minutes on Thursday out of its proper orientation when a software glitch caused thrusters on a newly arrived Russian science module to fire.

Whenever the capsule does blast off, the launch will begin a day-long trek to the International Space Station, where it will spend less than a week before returning to Earth to land in the western United States.

The launch, called Orbital Flight Test-2 or OFT-2, marks a crucial milestone for Boeing's Starliner system, which first attempted an uncrewed test flight to the space station in December 2019.

A successful mission would pave the way for three NASA astronauts to launch later this year on a crewed flight test, which would in turn allow Boeing to begin regularly ferrying astronauts to orbit, as its competitor SpaceX has already begun doing with the Crew Dragon capsule.

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