On Tuesday, a joint teleconference between NASA and Boeing officials was held on the current status of Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) after a valve anomaly prevented its launch in August. While work to confirm the root cause of the issue continues, the launch target for OFT-2 remains in the first half of 2022, with a Crewed Flight Test (CFT) about six months later.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Boeing teams have removed two of the three valves from Service Module-2, with a third planned to be removed soon. These three valves will then be shipped to NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center, located in Huntsville, Alabama. Once there, these valves will undergo a Computed Tomography (CT) scan and will be disassembled, as Boeing teams have yet to find a root cause for the issue.<\/p>\n
Testing is also occurring at NASA\u2019s White Sands Test Facility. \u201cThey have started some testing on two valves which we started back in September, a long-term oxidizer exposure without moisture,\u201d said Steve Stich, manager of NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew program. \u201cWe\u2019ll get some other valves out to White Sands and put them through a bunch of paces to replicate the environment in the C3PF and then also at the at the VIF.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not long after Starliner arrived back at the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) in August, Boeing teams found the most likely cause of the valve anomaly which was an interaction between humidity and the oxidizer in the valves of Service Module-2. This combination of moisture and oxidizer formed nitric acid and \u201ccorrosion products\u201d that caused the valves to get stuck closed.<\/p>\n