NASA and Boeing were again forced to cancel the first crewed launch of the company’s Starliner spacecraft.
NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were scheduled to lift off aboard the Starliner from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday at 12:25 p.m. ET. The flight to the International Space Station would have been the vehicle’s first with a crew.
The launch attempt was scrapped with just 3 minutes and 50 seconds left in the countdown — another setback for Boeing, which has suffered years of delays and budget overruns on its Starliner program.
Officials attempted to try again the next day, but announced Saturday evening that the flight had been postponed “to allow the team additional time to assess an issue with ground support equipment,” according to NASA.
NASA is expected to provide additional updates on Sunday, including when the Starliner capsule could next take off. According to NASA, there are additional options on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
The manned test flight of the Starliner is necessary for Boeing to demonstrate that the Starliner can safely transport astronauts to and from the space station. A successful mission could pave the way for NASA to allow Boeing to make routine trips to the orbiting outpost, giving the agency a long-awaited second option to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.
The decision to call off Saturday’s launch attempt was made after an automatic stop was activated on a computer known as the ground launch sequencer, which controls operations with the rocket in the final minutes of the launch countdown. The computer is located next to the rocket on the launch pad.
“These types of blocks occur when a command goes out and the computer cannot verify the correct response to a command,” said Dillon Rice, a systems test engineer and launch leader at United Launch Alliance. ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, produces the Atlas V rocket that will carry the Starliner capsule into orbit.
Rice said it is not yet known what caused the grab.
About two hours before launch, a separate problem was discovered with ground instruments used to refill propellant in the Atlas V rocket’s upper stage, but engineers were able to resolve that problem. Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, said it is unclear at this time whether the two issues are related.
Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, said the Starliner spacecraft performed “extremely well” during the countdown, despite the late phase of the abort.
“This is the business we’re in,” Nappi said in a post-scrub news briefing on Saturday. “Everything has to work perfectly.”
Indeed, launch scrubs are not uncommon in the world of human spaceflight.
In an interview hours before Saturday’s launch was called off, Sunita Williams’ mother, Bonnie Pandya, told NBC News that her daughter was in good spirits. “She is very cheerful. She is so happy to be going,” Pandya said. “She loves it.”
Boeing’s last launch attempt on May 6 was also called off with about two hours to go after a valve problem was discovered in the spacecraft’s Atlas V rocket. A separate helium leak was subsequently discovered in the Starliner’s propulsion system, further delaying the main 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 unlikely to pose a threat to the crew or spacecraft.
Both SpaceX and Boeing developed their spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The initiative began more than a decade ago to support private companies in building new space vehicles to carry astronauts to low Earth orbit following the retirement of the agency’s space shuttles.
But Boeing has fallen significantly behind SpaceX, which has been flying crewed missions to and from the space station for NASA since 2020.
Saturday’s issue is far from the only one the Starliner has faced. Software problems during the first unmanned flight in 2019 forced mission controllers to interrupt that journey before the vehicle could attempt to dock with the space station. A second attempt was subsequently postponed several times due to fuel valve problems. It wasn’t until 2022 that Boeing was able to conduct a successful unmanned 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 that can transport astronauts to the space station, and that Boeing is close to realizing that capability.
“We’re almost ready to fly this mission and then get our certification, and we’re excited to get started on that,” Stich said. ‘We’ll fly when we’re ready. And that should happen quickly.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
