Spaceflight

On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the near term.

Damn. That's that, I suppose.

"The International Space Station Program will continue working with Northrop Grumman to assess whether the Cygnus cargo module is able to safely fly to the space station on a future flight." That future flight, NG-23, will launch no earlier than this fall.

As a result, NASA is modifying the cargo on its next cargo flight to the space station, the 32nd SpaceX Cargo Dragon mission, due to launch in April. The agency says it will "add more consumable supplies and food to help ensure sufficient reserves of supplies aboard the station" to the Dragon vehicle.

No surprises there.

As it mulls stopgap measures, one option available to NASA may be to try to slot in a cargo mission on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. After the propulsion issues experienced on Starliner's first crew flight to the space station last June, NASA is still evaluating whether the vehicle can be certified for an operational crew mission, or whether it would be better to perform an uncrewed test flight.

I seems that this would cause a shuffle-down of all subsequent Starliner missions? OFT-1 becomes a cargo mission, OFT-2 becomes OFT-1, and so on?

NASA also has Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft on its internal schedule for a May launch this year. This is a new vehicle intended to carry cargo to the space station under the agency's Commercial Cargo program. However, that spacecraft is not yet ready for its debut flight, nor is there a Vulcan rocket available within the next several months to launch it. A Dream Chaser mission later this year remains possible, if unlikely.

I often wish we lived in the alternate reality where Dream Chaser got the funding that Starliner did.