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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

NASA wants to extend Boeing's first crewed flight to the International Space Station [theverge.com]

Boeing's first crewed flight to the International Space Station may last a lot longer than originally planned [nasa.gov] — and the mission may have an extra crew member along for the ride, too. The company's Starliner vehicle is supposed to take NASA astronauts to the ISS for the first time later this year on a two-week trip, but the space agency is considering extending the voyage to six months. Instead of sending just a two-person crew on the spacecraft, a third astronaut could be added as well.

This would completely restructure the first crewed trip for Starliner, which was only meant to be a test flight. As part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, both Boeing and SpaceX have been developing private vehicles to transport astronauts to and from the ISS. But before the companies can start doing full missions to the station, NASA wants each spacecraft to do two test flights to the ISS first: one without people on board and then one with crew. The two-person test flights are simply meant to demonstrate that the vehicles can keep passengers safe on the way to and from orbit. Full operational missions will last for months at a time and have up to four crew members on board.

Now, Boeing's test flight is looking more like a full crewed mission — the kind that it will be doing regularly once its Starliner is qualified for flight. That may be because NASA is running short of ways to get its astronauts to the ISS. NASA astronauts currently fly to the station on Russian Soyuz rockets, and the space agency has seats booked on flights of the vehicle for the next two years. The last Soyuz that will carry NASA astronauts will take off in fall 2019. After that, NASA will need to rely on its Commercial Crew partners to take astronauts to and from the ISS.

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