After the frustrated attempt this Saturday, when with 3 minutes and 50 seconds left a technical failure forced the first launch of the spacecraft to be postponed for the fourth time in a month Starliner; Its developer, Boeing, and NASA will try again next Wednesday if the weather permits and the mission engineers manage to solve the detected failure in time.
Starliner, a project that both entities signed in 2014 but has been seen disrupted by continuous delays and cost overrunswas scheduled to take off at 12:25 p.m. (6:25 p.m. on the Iberian Peninsula) on Saturday heading to the International Space Station (ISS), powered by an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) company, from the Space Force Station. from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA).
The astronauts had boarded for the second time (the first was on May 6, when the mission was also suspended due to another different failure). Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williamsthose in charge of testing the ship for the first time and docking with the International Space Station, where the Starliner will begin transporting cargo and astronauts starting in 2025 in the best of cases.
However, the Ground Launch Sequencer found an anomaly that automatically aborted the mission. The cause was not revealed at the time, but in a subsequent press conference, when the president of ULA, Tory Brunopointed to a faulty card within a sequencer system as the possible culprit.
Next attempts
The defined calendar set the next day, Sunday, to try again, but NASA finally ruled it out in order to thoroughly analyze what happened. After Sunday, the Selected later dates are Wednesday the 5th and Thursday the 6th. If they do not manage to launch the mission this week, they will have to postpone everything for at least ten days to be able to change the batteries of the ULA rocket.
In total, the launch has been postponed four times in the last month: on the 6th, the mission was aborted two hours before takeoff when an oxygen leak was discovered in a valve. It was postponed to the 17th, but shortly before another leak was found, this time of helium. The next scheduled date was the 21st, but NASA and Boeing did not arrive in time to resolve the failure. Finally, the tandem had decided to try again this Saturday, day 1, despite not having corrected the leak, as they concluded that it was a minor problem that did not compromise the safety of the ship.
