By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Boeing’s first Starliner mission carrying astronauts into space has been delayed again – until at least May 21 – due to a problem with the spacecraft’s propulsion system, the company said on Tuesday.
The Starliner mission carrying two NASA astronauts was scheduled to lift off from Florida last week until a technical problem with its Atlas 5 rocket prompted a postponement to Friday, May 17, the latest postponement of a program years behind schedule. and more than $1.5 billion over budget.
A new technical problem, now related to the Starliner itself, has led to another delay until at least next Tuesday, Boeing said in a statement.
“Starliner teams are working to resolve a small helium leak detected in the spacecraft’s service module,” Boeing said, adding that engineers traced the leak to a component of one of the propulsion system’s 28 control thrusters that are used for maneuvers in Earth’s orbit.
Boeing has been developing the Starliner for more than a decade to provide NASA with a second U.S. spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, built under the same NASA program, launched astronauts into space for the first time in 2020.
Starliner’s latest mission, called Crewed Flight Test, will be the final test before the spacecraft is certified by the US space agency to fly routine astronaut missions to the ISS. Boeing completed an unmanned Starliner trip to the ISS in 2022 after years of technical and management problems.
NASA officials and Boeing engineers will test and attempt to fix the helium leak before the next possible launch window on May 21 at 4:43 pm ET (8:43 pm GMT). Helium is used in Starliner to pressurize the fuel that powers the spacecraft’s thrusters for orbital maneuvers.
The Atlas 5 rocket, built by the Boeing and Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture, launches the Starliner into space. Before attempting to launch Starliner last week, ULA discovered a faulty valve on the Atlas 5 and removed the rocket from the launch pad to replace the valve.
Starliner’s sensors first detected suspicious traces of helium inside the propulsion system while the spacecraft was on the launch pad last week, but those detections did not alarm engineers at the time, according to a person briefed on mission operations. .
Boeing engineers investigated the helium detections while ULA replaced the Atlas 5’s faulty valve and determined that further testing and examination was needed to meet the mission’s strict launch safety criteria, the person said.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Will Dunham)
