Boeing’s Starliner spaceship did not launch as planned on Saturday, its second scuttled attempt to blast off with test pilots in the past month.
NASA Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams deboarded the craft, following a problem that surfaced with less than four minutes remaining on the countdown clock. Starliner’s first crewed test flight was supposed to lift off at about 12:25 p.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
A ground launch computer that takes over when the rocket is in the final minutes of the countdown issued an automatic halt, but the reason for the abort was not immediately clear. The next launch opportunity is 12:03 p.m. ET Sunday. Whether teams can reset that quickly is not yet known, but more launch times are available Wednesday and Thursday.
“Of course it’s disappointing,” said Lauren Brennecke, a Boeing commentator, “but it is part of the business, and the ultimate goal is just to make sure that our precious cargo, Butch and Suni, are safe.”
The long, thorny history of Boeing’s Starliner spaceship
NASA expected this flight to happen years ago, but Boeing has struggled to resolve a string of issues with the spacecraft. Teams scrubbed the previous launch attempt May 4 because of an oxygen relief valve concern on the rocket.
While assessing that problem, engineers discovered a small helium leak in Starliner’s service module. Teams determined it was a tiny hole in a rubber seal that should not impede spaceflight. If the leak were to somehow worsen, flight controllers said it could be managed in space.
U.S. astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams wave to a crowd before boarding Calypso, a Boeing Starliner spaceship, on June 1, 2024.
Credit: NASA / Joel Kowsky
A successful flight of the craft, named “Calypso” by Williams, would help to secure a second commercial carrier for getting astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Elon Musk‘s SpaceX Crew Dragon completed the same test in 2019 and has since taken at least 50 people to the lab orbiting 250 miles above Earth.
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No longer serviced by its own Space Shuttle, NASA relied on Russian rockets after 2011 to get astronauts into space. That period ended in 2020 when SpaceX took over that responsibility, but the space agency has been without any backup, which wasn’t the original plan. The United States was paying upward of $86 million per ride.
The Starliner test pilots pull down their helmet visors during the countdown before launch on June 1, 2024.
Credit: NASA / Youtube screenshot
If certified, Starliner missions will have the ability to take up to four astronauts to the station at a time, increasing the amount of research at the orbiting lab.
“It’s going to make a tremendous difference for us,” said NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy. “The station has been operating for more than 20 years, we’ve done thousands of experiments, but really, in some cases, we’re limited by the amount of time the crew can spend. By having four crew members instead of three, we’re literally going to be able to double the amount of time that our astronauts can spend doing science.”
Despite Starliner’s prior challenges, Wilmore and Williams have said they are unfazed by its mishaps and setbacks.
Boeing’s uncrewed Starliner spacecraft successfully reaches the International Space Station on May 20, 2022.
Credit: Samantha Cristoforetti / NASA
“If we could go back just three years and talk about the capabilities of the spacecraft, what it was then, as envisioned, and then where it’s at now, after these discoveries and the rectification of fixing all of those issues that we found, it’s really leaps and bounds forward,” Wilmore told Mashable during a news conference earlier this month.
Williams added that they’ve talked through the previous concerning headlines with their families.
“I think they’re happy and proud that we’ve been part of the process to fix it all,” she said.
