NASA Scrubs Boeing Starliner Test After Space Station Gets Jolt

(Bloomberg) -- NASA postponed the Friday launch of Boeing Co.’s Starliner capsule after the International Space Station got an unplanned shove from a newly arrived Russian module. 

The U.S. space agency didn’t immediately set a new date for the uncrewed mission, which is a do-over of a botched test from December 2019. Earlier Thursday, the thrusters on Russia’s Nauka module turned on unexpectedly after docking, causing a brief loss of attitude control. The orbiting lab suffered no damage and none of the seven crew members aboard was hurt. 

The mishap delays Boeing’s shot at showing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that it’s ready to carry astronauts to the space station under the U.S. agency’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA’s other contractor in the program, Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has performed three successful missions carrying crew members.

Even before the incident at the station, the Starliner schedule was precarious because of the Friday weather forecast in Florida, with only a 50% chance of favorable conditions. NASA officials said this week that they would look to Aug. 3 and 4 as backup flight dates because of a classified operation planned for the Kennedy Space Center’s launch range on Saturday. 

At the station, Russian cosmonauts had opened the new Nauka module’s hatch and were incorporating its computers with the existing Zvedza service module when the newcomer began firing its thrusters at 12:45 p.m. Eastern time. The firings changed the station’s attitude by 45 degrees, NASA said. 

A Russian Progress cargo craft attached to the station began firing its own thrusters to counteract the effect from the Nauka module. Roscosmos flight controllers planned to reconfigure the Nauka thrusters to prevent a recurrence, NASA said. The U.S. space agency and Russia are investigating why the unplanned thrusting occurred. 

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