By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – A second attempt to launch Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule on its first test flight with NASA astronauts on board was automatically aborted by a computer abort system minutes before liftoff, mission officials said.
The canceled launch, which caps off a series of 11th-hour technical issues that ground crews had been working on and resolved earlier in the countdown, adds another indefinite delay to the highly anticipated and much-delayed test flight.
The next available launch window for the mission is around noon Sunday local time, but NASA said Saturday that mission officials will give up on that opportunity without setting a new date. The next chance to launch is Wednesday, June 5th and Thursday, June 6th.
“We got really close today,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program.
“I know it’s a little disappointing, we were all excited. That’s what space flights are like,” he said.
Saturday’s delay was triggered by computers on the Atlas V rocket’s launch pad that coordinated the final moments before liftoff. Officials said the Starliner capsule appeared healthy.
At a news conference following the postponement, executives from Boeing and United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture that owns the Atlas V rocket, hoped that a review of computers Saturday night would allow a launch on Sunday.
“We’ll either take this opportunity or the next opportunity,” Boeing vice president Mark Nappi told reporters.
According to NASA’s statement, the decision to abandon the launch opportunity on Sunday “will give the team additional time” to evaluate the issue.
The CST-200 Starliner’s first crewed journey with two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) marks a major milestone for Boeing as it seeks to capture a larger share of the lucrative NASA business currently dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. continues.
The gumdrop-shaped Starliner capsule stood atop Atlas V, ready to explode from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
But with three minutes and 50 seconds left on the countdown clock after the final “go” order for the launch was given by the flight director, the ground system computer triggered an automatic abort command that shut down the launch sequence, according to mission officials.
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ULA Chief Executive Officer Tory Bruno said the primary causes could be “either a hardware issue or a networking issue” between the three computers that control the autostart systems.
Boeing’s first attempt to send an uncrewed Starliner to the space station in 2019 failed due to software and engineering glitches. The second attempt in 2022 was successful, paving the way for efforts to get the first crewed test mission off the ground.
On May 6, the countdown was stopped just two hours before launch time due to a faulty pressure valve in the Atlas V’s upper stage, which was followed by weeks of further delays caused by other engineering problems after they were resolved in the Starliner itself.
The two-member crew, NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, 61, and Sunita “Suni” Williams, 58, were strapped into their seats on the spacecraft for several hours before launch activities were suspended Saturday.
Once the flight was cleared, technicians safely helped the astronauts exit the capsule and away from the launch tower and returned them to their quarantine quarters to await the next flight attempt.
It is not uncommon in the space industry, especially on new spacecraft flying humans for the first time, for the countdown to be stopped at the 11th hour and launches delayed for days or weeks, even when seemingly minor malfunctions or unusual sensor readings are detected. .
Boeing, whose commercial aircraft manufacturing operations are in disarray after several crises, desperately needs success in space for its Starliner initiative, which is several years behind schedule with more than $1.5 billion in cost overruns.
While Boeing struggled, SpaceX became a reliable space taxi service for NASA, providing the only way for ISS crews to launch into orbit from U.S. soil.
NASA, which supports the next generation of custom-made spacecraft, sees Starliner as an important second vehicle within the ambitious Artemis program that can carry astronauts to the space station, as well as to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
After launch, Starliner is expected to arrive at the space station after a flight of about 24 hours and dock with the orbiting research outpost about 250 miles (402 km) above Earth.
Plans call for two astronauts to remain on the space station for about a week before taking the Starliner back to Earth for a parachute- and airbag-assisted landing in the U.S. Desert Southwest, a first for crewed NASA missions.
The fact that Starliner has reached this point under a $4.2 billion fixed-price contract with NASA is a worrying move for Boeing, which has since risen to about $4.5 billion, according to a Reuters review of contract changes since it was signed in 2014. The process happened.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sam Holmes, Will Dunham, Chris Reese and Paul Simao)