NASA had originally aimed to send Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on its first crewed voyage on May 6, but an issue surfaced with United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket just two hours before liftoff, prompting the launch to be scrubbed.
It was a setback for everyone involved — not least NASA astronauts Bob Wilmore and Suni Williams, who minutes before the launch was canceled, had been strapped into their seats inside the Starliner on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But as NASA chief Bill Nelson said when the countdown clock was halted, safety must come first.
NASA revealed a revised targeted launch date of May 17, but this was pushed to May 21 after engineers discovered a “small helium leak” on the Starliner spacecraft that had to be dealt with.
Then, on Friday, NASA said that engineers will “take additional time to work through spacecraft closeout processes and flight rationale,” which means it’s now targeting launch for no earlier than 3:09 p.m. ET on Saturday, May 25.
It said the extra time would allow it to “further assess a small helium leak in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft’s service module traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster.”
The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and Boeing’s Starliner capsule remain in the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex-41 at Kennedy, while Wilmore and Williams are still being quarantined in Houston as prelaunch operations progress. They will fly back to Kennedy closer to the launch date.
When the long-awaited mission finally gets underway, the two astronauts will fly to the International Space Station, where they’ll spend about a week before returning to Earth in the Starliner.
A successful mission will pave the way for certification of the spacecraft, allowing NASA to use it for crew rotation flights to and from the ISS and providing it with another transportation option alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which performed its first crewed flight in 2020 and has since flown eight operational flights to the orbital outpost.
NASA will live stream the launch and early stages of the mission. Here’s how to watch.
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