Boeing's inaugural crewed launch for NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) suffered from yet another delay yesterday after NASA announced that the mission will now take place on May 17th at the earliest. Starliner, a ship that will carry two astronauts to the ISS, was expected to lift off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida earlier this month. However, last-minute issues delayed the launch, with NASA and ULA - the rocket launch provider whose Atlas V rocket will send the ship to space - initially resetting the clock to May 10th.
Another Week Added To NASA Astronauts' Test Flight For Boeing's Starliner Spacecraft
SpaceX's Crew and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, which are the most successful privately developed and operated spaceships in human history, have shifted the way NASA's teams in Houston manage the ISS. A Dragon is docked with the ISS most of the time during the year, and ahead of Starliner's initial launch attempt earlier this month, NASA had to make the crewed Dragon shift its ports and send a cargo Dragon back to Earth.
Because of the tight schedule, the timelines of new launches have to be carefully mapped out to ensure that the availability of ports on the ISS is not constrained for future launches. SpaceX's Cargo Dragon typically launches at least once during May, June or July, and given that the two NASA astronauts testing Starliner will spend two weeks on board ISS, the agency will have to ensure any further delays to the launch date do not conflict with the schedule of cargo flights to ISS.
Starliner's initial launch on May 6th was scrubbed two hours before liftoff after ground teams discovered abnormal behavior with a valve on the Centaur upper stage.
Throughout the post scrub press conference, NASA, Boeing and ULA officials had maintained that astronaut safety was their primary objective when deciding launch dates and times. The decision to shift ULA's rocket launch to May 17th was announced at night yesterday, soon after NASA shared additional details for the valve problem behind the scrub in a blog post.
ULA's head Tory Bruno had shared at the conference that his firm would have to check whether a valve was within the acceptable use range for launching crews. He explained that during the countdown, such an issue requires ULA to reset the valve and confirm that it can handle the stress of spaceflight. While this would typically be done while the rocket was fueled and ready for launch, the presence of a crew inside the ship had forced ULA to wait for them to leave Starliner.
Bruno added that teams had cycled the valve after crew egress, which had removed the 'buzzing' that had made them stand down from launch. ULA was initially using data from nearby accelerometers on the Centaur's engines, and NASA built on these details yesterday as it announced the delay.
According to the space agency, the buzz or oscillations "temporarily dampened" after ULA's initial reset but then they "occurred twice during fuel removal operations." ULA's subsequent evaluation the valve and data from the launch attempt then led it to eventually conclude that valve replacement would be the optimal decision as the component had "exceeded its qualification."
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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