Boeing Starliner launch delayed to at least May 17 for Atlas 5 rocket repair

May 8, 2024 Benjamin Hughes

After analyzing data following a launch scrub Monday, United Launch Alliance managers decided to haul the Atlas 5 rocket carrying Boeing’s Starliner astronaut ferry ship back to its processing facility to replace a suspect valve, delaying another launch try to at least May 17, NASA said in a blog post Tuesday.

The new “no-earlier-than” launch target from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — 6:16 p.m. EDT a week from Friday — will give engineers more time to carry out the valve repair while setting up a rendezvous with the International Space Station that fits into the U.S. Eastern Range launch schedule, which coordinates all rocket flights from the East Coast.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule stands poised atop pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After a launch scrub Monday, the rocket will be hauled back to a processing facility where engineers can replace a suspect oxygen pressure relief valve in Centaur upper stage. The next launch attempt is targeted for no earlier than May 17.

United Launch Alliance

The Starliner, Boeing’s long-delayed answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, was grounded Monday just two hours before its planned launch on its first piloted test flight to the space station. On board were NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams.

is years behind schedule after a series of technical problems that have cost Boeing more than $1 billion to correct. In the meantime, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of them to the space station.

While Boeing has been under intense scrutiny in recent months because of problems with its 737 airliners, the Starliner program, while behind schedule, is a separate operation. The launch delay was not the result of any problem with Boeing hardware.

William Harwood

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.

Source: cbsnews.com