In her prepared remarks, Michelle Parker, Boeing vice president and deputy general manager of Space and Launch, explained the steps her company is taking to ensure the Starliner spacecraft is ready to take to the skies later this month.

As part of a media conference call for its Orion spacecraft second operational flight test (OFT-2), Boeing representatives assured media members that Space It didn't have any impact on them. Boeing and SpaceX are both part of the NASA (NASA) Commercial Crew Program, which is designed to develop the United States' sustained capability for crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS).

In her prepared remarks, Michelle Parker, Boeing vice president and deputy general manager of Space and Launch, explained the steps her company is taking to ensure the Starliner spacecraft is ready to take to the skies later this month. The mission, known as OFT-2, was originally scheduled to launch in July last year, but was delayed after an incident on the International Space Station prevented docking between and . Then, a month later in August, Boeing withdrew from the launch attempt, explaining that valve issues on the spacecraft made the launch unfeasible.

Now, nine months after the problem was discovered, Boeing is confident that the Starliner's propulsion valves are not faulty. Parker, the lead engineer on the test vehicle after the launch delay, outlined:

The spacecraft looks good, it performs well and it's ready for tomorrow's trip. The team is also ready, they have been rehearsing, they are ready and we are looking forward to a successful mission on the 19th. Just wanted to say a few words about the issue with the oxidizer isolation valve, which we have been working on since our last attempt in August. Significant progress has now been made. We've been able to narrow down the root cause and put in place mitigations that I'll talk about to make sure we don't have that concern again. Therefore, we are confident that we have resolved this issue and have the correct procedures in place moving forward.

If you remember when we first encountered this issue in August, we immediately set up a comprehensive investigation team. So it's all team members involved, NASA, Boeing and ourselves, to look at all possible causes with the goal of understanding the issue, mitigating it, and getting back to the launch pad as safely and efficiently as possible. I'm happy to be able to say that the team has accomplished this goal and we're ready to go. As you may recall, we followed a rigorous process to make sure we understood the behavior; we went through a fault tree analysis; we looked at all potential causes, used facts and figures to eliminate all potential causes, and The root cause was hone in on.

So this is still the reason we talked about back in October, which is the combination of dinitrogen tetroxide or NTO within the valve, the ambient humidity and the aluminum housing of the valve. So you need all three of these aspects to come together so that the first two aspects, the NTO and ambient humidity, react to produce nitric acid which then reacts with the aluminum housing of the valve causing corrosion products which then lead to blocking Valve movement, which is a very, very small movement, like 30 millimeters of movement, just the presence of these corrosion products can impede that progress.

So that's our root cause. We have completed testing both inside and outside the ship. So, as you know, we did send the ship back to the factory. We did a lot of testing on service module two, testing the valves that were having this issue to understand its behavior and really hone in on what we were seeing. Since then we have also been able to remove those valves and disassemble the valves, one valve was stuck, one valve was intermittent, and one valve was not stuck. What we see in these valves are these corrosion products that we mentioned. So we were able to confirm the existence of these products in the way that I just said. We also did external spacecraft material testing, and we also did external spacecraft valve testing using valves that were not on the spacecraft at White Sands to confirm these corrosion products produced by these three components.During this test, we also exposed these valves to the environmental conditions seen by the valves, as well as those we would expect to see on the OFT-2, and confirmed that our mitigation methods were appropriate.

So when I talked again about the mitigations that we've taken, Mark mentioned that as well. As I mentioned, in order to create this reaction you need these three components, the NTO, moisture in the air, and the aluminum casing. Without these three components, you won't be responsive. So if there was no moisture, if you could eliminate the moisture in the valve, you wouldn't have this reaction and it wouldn't cause corrosion. So we've done some mitigations, including dry cleaning the valves, so the valves have compartments, and we've had CN2 clean the valves to prevent any moisture from getting into the valves.

We also sealed potential moisture paths in the electrical connectors to ensure we don't get any ambient humidity through that path. So those two things are going to prevent moisture from getting into the valve to start that reaction. Also, we loaded the NTO later in the process, Mark mentioned that the ship was already loaded, and we loaded it later in the process, so the NTO had less exposure time. We have also operationally increased cycling of the valves every two to five days after loading until we launch to ensure the valves remain operational. We've been doing this cycle, we've done it successfully, and we'll continue to do it. The final cycle will take place on the 17th, and then on the 19th we will cycle the valve again during a nominal countdown launch sequence.

Later in the event, Associated Press 's Marcia Dunn tried to steer the conversation from a technical to a motivational perspective, asking Boeing representatives if they were frustrated watching SpaceX launch crews to the International Space Station on a regular basis.

In response, Ms Parker said:

... Our focus is really arriving safely, completing the mission safely, learning as much as possible and being able to provide a great service to our NASA customers, and that's Our focus now. I think there's a lot of exciting things happening in space, and as space professionals we're always excited about everything that's going on. We certainly want to be a part of it. We're looking forward to a successful mission on this occasion and that's our focus, the real focus is on achieving a successful mission and being able to provide that capability to our customers.

She was joined by Boeing Vice President and CST-100 Starliner Program Manager Mark Nappi, who stressed that safety was of paramount importance to his company.

According to Mark:

I just wanted to add. I represent the workforce, I talk to them regularly, they are professionals, they understand what we do here. It's very difficult to build, develop and launch this type of aircraft, so they've got, they're laser-focused on doing it, and that's really what they're thinking about. So we're going to do it in the safest and best quality possible, and when we launch, we will launch.

Finally, Kathryn Leuders, associate administrator of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate, clarified that Boeing and SpaceX are part of the same team and that her agency is grateful to SpaceX for providing it with the ability to conduct detailed safety investigations with the option to conduct them simultaneously Human spaceflight.

As Ms. Leuders explained:

Marcia, I would say we, this is about a team right, so I'm very grateful that Boeing didn't, Stitch didn't take any shortcuts. We are taking it step by step. We did extensive testing. Make sure we remove the hardware from the spacecraft and do a detailed failure investigation. Making sure that our team really understands this before the spacecraft launches and brings them into the launch event. So that really showed me a lot of maturity and not rushing things, and obviously we're also very grateful to SpaceX for giving us this opportunity to be able to have the time and fly. These are the things you have to do when doing human spaceflight.I think as a combined Boeing and SpaceX team, we're really grateful to both suppliers for operating in this way and being able to provide this support.

NASA-Boeing's OFT-2 mission will take to the skies on May 19 from the agency's launch site in Florida. If successful, it would pave the way for the first manned test of Starliner after returning to Earth.