by NASA and Boeing have been forced to cancel the first crewed launch of the company’s Starliner spacecraft again.
NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were scheduled to board the Starliner from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday at 12:25 pm ET. The flight to the International Space Station was the first flight of the vehicle with a crew.
The launch attempt was scrapped with just 3 minutes and 50 seconds left in the countdown – yet another setback for Boeing, which has already dealt with years of delays and budget overruns with its Starliner program.
Officials said they are targeting another launch opportunity Sunday at 12:03 pm ET, but said the flight could be further delayed if additional work is needed at the launch pad.
Boeing needs a crewed test flight of the Starliner to show that the Starliner can safely ferry astronauts to and from the space station. A successful mission could pave the way for NASA to authorize Boeing to make regular trips to the orbiting outpost, giving the agency a long-awaited second option on the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
The decision to shut down Saturday’s launch attempt was made after an automatic hold was triggered on a computer called the ground launch sequencer, which controls operations with the rocket in the final minutes of a launch countdown. The computer is located next to the rocket on the launch pad.
“A hold like this happens when a command goes out and the computer can’t verify the correct response to a command,” said Dillon Rice, system test engineer and launch dispatcher at United Launch Alliance. A joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, ULA makes the Atlas V rocket that takes the Starliner capsule into orbit.
Rís said that it is not yet known what caused the stomach upset.
About two hours before liftoff, a particular issue was detected with ground instrumentation used to reach the top of the propellant in the upper stage of the Atlas V rocket, but engineers were able to resolve that problem. Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, said it’s unclear at this time if the two problems were related.
Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, said the Starliner spacecraft performed very well during the countdown, despite the late abort.
“This is the business we’re in,” Nappi said Saturday in a post-scrummage briefing. “Everything has to work perfectly.”
Indeed, launch scrubbers are not uncommon in the world of human spaceflight. If the Starliner capsule does not launch on Sunday, there are additional opportunities on June 5 and 6, according to NASA.
In an interview hours earlier before Saturday’s launch, Sunita Williams’ mother, Bonnie Pandya, told NBC News that her daughter was in good spirits. “She is very happy. She is very happy with the way it is going,” said Pandya. “She loves it.”
Boeing’s final launch attempt was also aborted on May 6, that time with about two hours left in the countdown, after a problem was discovered with a valve in the spacecraft’s Atlas V rocket. A separate helium leak was later discovered in the Starliner’s propulsion system, further delaying the key test flight.
The rocket’s valve was replaced, mission controllers said at a news briefing last week, but the helium leak was not repaired before Saturday’s scheduled flight because it was deemed unlikely to pose a threat to the crew or the spacecraft.
Both SpaceX and Boeing developed their spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The initiative was started more than a decade ago to support private companies building new space vehicles to take astronauts to low-Earth orbit, after the agency’s space shuttles were retired.
But Boeing fell far behind SpaceX, which has been flying crewed missions to and from the space station for NASA since 2020.
Saturday’s edition is far from the only one Starliner faced. Software problems on its first uncrewed flight in 2019 forced mission controllers to cut that trip short before the vehicle could attempt to land with the space station. The second attempt was then delayed several times by fuel valve issues. It wasn’t until 2022 that Boeing was able to make a successful uncrewed flight to and from the space station.
Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew program manager, said it’s important for the agency to have more than one spacecraft to transport astronauts to the space station, and that Boeing is close to achieving that capability.
“We’re very close to being ready to fly this mission and then go through our certification, and we’re excited to get going,” Stich said. “We will fly when we are ready. And it should be soon.”
Bruno said crews will be working at night to investigate what caused the launch abort, and hope to try again in less than 24 hours.
“We’re at the finish line,” he said. “Let’s take one more step.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
