THE NEW SPACE RACE: First piloted flight of Boeing’s oft-delayed Starliner astronaut ferry ship slips to mid-summer.

The first piloted flight of Boeing’s Starliner astronaut ferry ship is slipping from late April to at least July 21, officials said Wednesday, to allow more time to close out paperwork and to carry out an additional test of the spacecraft’s parachute deploy system.

Running years behind schedule, the Crew Flight Test, or CFT, mission will carry two veteran astronauts — Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams — to the International Space Station to verify the ship’s readiness to begin regular service ferrying crews to and from the lab complex, alternating with SpaceX’s already operational Crew Dragon.

NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said there’s nothing wrong with Starliner’s parachute system and “when we look across the vehicle, the Starliner spacecraft is in really good shape. … The Atlas Launch vehicle is ready for flight.”

But reviewing the paperwork needed to officially clear the spacecraft for flight, along with the addition of another ground test and fitting the flight into a busy East Coast launch schedule, combined to push the long-awaited mission from spring to the mid-summer timeframe.

It doesn’t sound serious, but yet another delay doesn’t look good.