Boeing's ill-fated Starliner spacecraft has suffered another major setback as NASA announced today that its first crewed launch has been postponed indefinitely. This comes after four launch dates were scrubbed in less than three weeks due to technical issues.
With all of Boeing's current troubles, today's announcement is hard to spin as anything other than bad news. Certainly, it's a major embarrassment.
Starliner began life as part of NASA's commercial space program aimed at replacing the Russian Soyuz spacecraft with ones built and operated by US private companies to ferry cargo and crew to and from the International Space Station.
As is the usual American practice, the idea was to not only achieve a particular mission objective, but to spark whole new industries by having two or more companies competing with one another. In this case, it was Boeing and SpaceX, with Boeing being seen as the unbeatable 800-pound gorilla in the room.
NASA, @BoeingSpace, and @ulalaunch are forgoing the May 25 launch attempt for the agency's Boeing Crew Flight Test following meetings assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy.
— NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) May 22, 2024
The next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed. We will share more… pic.twitter.com/SBNwlqswpg
That was back in 2010. Fourteen years later, while SpaceX has made multiple trips to the ISS, Starliner has seen cost overruns, delays, a raft of technical issues, and an unfortunate debut uncrewed flight that saw the craft placed in the wrong orbit due to software problems caused by a poor engineering strategy that kept design teams isolated from one another.
On May 6, 2024, all that was supposed to change as NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams sat aboard Starliner atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. With only a few hours to go, the launch was aborted due to a problem with an oxygen valve in the Centaur upper stage.
While the malfunction was not with the Starliner, it was still a public relations setback for Boeing because the company owns 50% of ULA. The launch was pushed back to May 17, which was also scrubbed because of a leaking helium valve in Starliner's Service Module. The next date, May 21 was put back to May 25 as engineers continued to assess the situation and weigh up whether to fly with the leaky valve or remove the capsule from the rocket for repairs.
On May 21, NASA released an official statement, saying, "The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy. There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed. NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward."
Now the space agency has delayed the launch indefinitely while the problems are sorted out and the next possible launch date determined.
When that will be is anybody's guess.
Source: NASA
