Boeing and NASA postponed the takeoff of the first manned space mission of the Starliner ship to May 17, in view of the need to replace a valve on the Atlas V launch rocket, the US space agency reported.
The managers of the test mission of Boeing’s Starliner ship had set next Friday as the tentative date for takeoff from Florida (USA), after the cancellation with about two hours left of the scheduled takeoff last Monday from Florida when some failures in a valve were discovered.
The Starliner was scheduled to take off that day at 10:34 p.m. local time (02:34 GMT Tuesday) from a launch complex at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with NASA astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita Williams as crew members.
However, as Boeing later reported, the mission control center detected “abnormal behavior of the pressure regulation valve in the liquid oxygen tank of the upper stage” of the Atlas V launch rocket, from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) company.
Once the data analysis is completed, ULA has decided to replace that valve, which will require remove the rocket with the ship at the top of the launch pad and take it to a hangar where the operation will be carried out.
Boeing’s CFT (Crew Flight Test) mission aims to achieve the necessary certifications from NASA to be able to begin operating as a second provider of crew and cargo transportation to the so-called orbital laboratory. service that the SpaceX firm has already officially provided since 2020.
Last week, James Free, associate administrator of NASA, had warned that the CFT It is a test flight and, therefore, unforeseen events could arise.
