• The first Starliner voyage to the International. Space Station.
• With astronauts aboard is targeted for February 2023.

Boeing is under a $4.5 billion fixed-price NASA contract for Starliner development and six routine missions.

After the spacecraft’s certification.

Starliner’s first crewed flight would come nearly a year after the spacecraft flew to the space station and back without any humans in March, completing a critical demonstration mission for NASA on its second try after software failures cut short a similar test flight in 2019.

Boeing and NASA expect to fly the crewed mission after engineers correct issues encountered during Starliner’s March test flight, including a few onboard thruster failures during the spacecraft’s ascent to orbit that the company’s Starliner boss, Mark Nappi, attributed to debris.

“Currently we’re targeting a launch date as early as February of 2023,” Steve Stich, head of the NASA program that oversees Starliner’s development, told reporters in a joint news conference with Boeing.

The eight-day mission, transporting NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the station and back, would mark the final test mission before NASA can certify Starliner for routine astronaut missions.

Once certified, the capsule would become NASA’s second option for getting astronauts to and from the station, joining SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which was certified in 2020.

Launch schedule changes and engineering fixes resulting from Starliner’s March test mission cost Boeing $93 million, the company said in July, bringing Boeing’s total Starliner-related charges to $688 million since the spacecraft’s 2019 test failures.

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