Boeing’s Starliner scrubs again in attempt for first human spaceflight

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. – With under four minutes on the countdown clock, teams scrubbed a launch attempt Saturday of a pair of NASA astronauts seated in what was supposed to be the first human spaceflight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner.

A backup date is available for Sunday at 12:03 p.m., but NASA, Boeing and ULA may not make that call until later Saturday night based on the findings ULA makes with what it has identified as the source of the problem.

Additional backup options fall to Wednesday and Thursday. Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a 90% chance for good conditions for the Sunday backup option.

Saturday was the second time Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams took the ride out to the pad and came close to launching after their initial attempt on May 6 was called off with two hours before liftoff.

“We got really close today,” said NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich. “I know it’s a little disappointing. We were all excited. Butch and Suni were excited to go fly. This is kind of the way spaceflight is.”

With 3 minutes and 50 seconds ahead of launch, the tell-tale “Hold, hold, hold” came through the mission control communication lines leading to the latest abort of the Crew Flight Test mission.

The duo were strapped into the Starliner sitting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41, but a computerized ground launch sequencer did not load into a proper configuration during the terminal count forcing the scrub, according to NASA.

The pair had to once again leave the spacecraft to make their way back to crew quarters at KSC.

“They’ve had a great attitude during the whole long quarantine period,” said NASA astronaut Mike Fincke. “So hopefully this is a shorter round and getting ready for the next time. … They’re keeping their optimism right now and keeping options open.”

The scrub happened because one of three ULA computers that are part of the ground systems at the launch pad couldn’t confirm quickly that everything was set to go, according to ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno.

ULA requires all three to agree for the sequence of “things like retracting umbilicals and pyro events that release the bolts of the base of the rocket and then when ignition happens the rocket is free to fly away to do its job,” he said.

“Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up,” he said. “That tripped a red line and then created an automatic hold.”

The fix is to check the problem computer, which cannot happen until the fuel is removed from the rocket and any hazardous gas is cleared so people can get in to look at it.

“If it’s as simple as replacing (a part), we have spares for everything and we will do that,” he said. “We will test it, which is required, and then be in a position to support a recycle for tomorrow. If it’s more involved in that or it just takes longer to get through all of that, then we will move to the backup day on (Wednesday).”

Liftoff on Saturday was set for 12:25 p.m. with the International Space Station the destination. The countdown saw a few issues that needed troubleshooting including each of the astronauts’ spacesuit fans shutting down temporarily, and problems reading data from ULA’s upper Centaur stage’s cryogenic propellant.

On their previous trip to the launch pad, a fluttering valve on the Centaur stage ultimately led to a scrub and rollback of the rocket to ULA’s nearby Vertical Integration Facility for replacement. But teams then also took the time to gauge the threat of a small helium leak found on the Starliner’s propulsion system, which managers ultimately decided to not fix before this second launch attempt.

“I mean it’s a really, really small leak and it’s well within the margin that we have,” Stich said during a prelaunch press conference Friday. “And so sometimes for spaceflight, you plan for contingencies and you design the vehicle to have margin. And in our case, we have margin in the helium tank and we’ve worked really hard and worked really hard to understand that margin and understand maybe the worst cases.”

Stich said the spacecraft could handle a leak that was 100 times worse and still fly safely.

“We took the time to go through that data, and we really think that we can manage this leak both by looking at it before we launch, and then if it got bigger in flight, we could manage it,” he said.

Teams on Saturday remeasured the leak noting it was still within parameters, and less than what was seen on May 6.

Whenever Wilmore and Williams do take flight, they will try for a rendezvous with the ISS a little over a day after launch. They will then stay on board about eight days before making the return trip to Earth for a parachute-assisted desert landing in the southwestern United States.

As a test flight, the duo will work through manual backup navigation systems and be the first to fly with life support systems as well as making sure the capsule can act as a lifeboat while attached to the ISS. The capsule itself already flew to space on the original Orbital Flight Test mission in December 2019.

“Everything’s new, the procedures are new,” said Wilmore ahead of launch. “We have procedures now that we didn’t have a year ago because we’ve learned as the process has gone forward.”

Williams was given the honor to name the capsule after it landed, and dubbed it Calypso, in deference to oceanographer Jacques Cousteau’s famed vessel. The zero-gravity indicator for the mission follows the maritime theme, a stuffed narwhal that is also named Calypso.

The CFT mission is the final key needed before NASA can certify Starliner so it can begin regular rotational crew missions to the ISS. Boeing is playing catch-up to SpaceX, which just celebrated the four-year anniversary of its own crewed test flight, Demo-2, that launched from KSC on May 31, 2020.

SpaceX has since been the sole U.S.-based provider for human spaceflight for NASA. Its fleet of four Crew Dragons have launched 13 times carrying 50 people to space, including last February’s launch of Crew-8, who await the arrival on Starliner on the ISS as part of Expedition 71.

The Commercial Crew Program was designed to end NASA’s reliance on Russia with its Soyuz launches after the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. The contracts for Boeing and SpaceX were awarded in 2014, but both programs faced development delays.