CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Defective software could have doomed Boeing's crew capsule during its first test flight, a botched trip that was cut short and never made it to the International Space Station, NASA and company officials said Friday. The Starliner capsule launched without astronauts in December, but its automatic timer was off by 11 hours, preventing the capsule from flying to the space station as planned. This software trouble — which left the capsule in the wrong orbit just after liftoff — set off a scramble to find more possible coding errors, Boeing officials said. Hours before the Starliner's scheduled touchdown, a second software mistake was discovered, this time involving the Starliner's service module. In addition, damage to the Starliner's heat shield could have caused the capsule to burn up on reentry, he noted.

Source: International New York Times February 07, 2020 18:31 UTC