The launch of Boeing’s first manned space mission was canceled this Monday with about two hours left before takeoff to the International Space Station (ISS) from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA). The reason for the cancellation is due to failures in one of the valves of the Atlas V launch rocket, from the private firm United Launch Alliance (ULA), on which Boeing’s Starliner ship is mounted, NASA reported.
The decision to cancel today’s takeoff was made by the launch manager for ULA, Tom Hetter III, and, according to the US space agency, the teams will check one of the oxygen valves of the Atlas V, where it apparently resides. the origin of the technical failure. “NASA’s first priority is safety. We will go when we are ready,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who confirmed the cancellation in this way.
The Starliner was scheduled to take off tonight at 10:34 p.m. local time (2:34 GMT on Wednesday), from a launch complex at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with NASA astronauts on board, Barry ‘ Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita Williams. The new release date will not be before May 10.
Boeing’s CFT (Crew Flight Test) mission aims to achieve the necessary certifications from NASA to be able to begin operating as the second provider of crew and cargo transportation to the so-called orbital laboratory, a service that it has officially provided since 2020. the SpaceX firm.
The US space agency has given Boeing about $4.2 billion from 2014 to date to achieve this goal, and therefore expectations were considerable today at Cape Canaveral. In that same period of time, SpaceX received 2.6 billion dollars and its Dragon capsule has already made more than a dozen flights to the ISS, differences alluded to today by its executive president, magnate Elon Musk, who in a message on X, hours before the scheduled takeoff he launched a probable explanation: “Too many non-technical managers at Boeing.”
Today’s cancellation adds to a series of setbacks that the Starliner has recorded, which managed to fly to the ISS in a first test mission, without a crew in May 2022, after two failed attempts in 2019 and 2021.
In the face of its first manned mission, there have been no shortage of setbacks for Boeing, which had scheduled the launch of this mission for July 21, 2023, but the discovery of some failures in the parachute system and in some fiber insulating tapes glass forced its postponement with a month and a half left.
“I can say with complete confidence that the teams have absolutely done their due diligence,” James Free, associate administrator of NASA, said last week during a teleconference in which he made clear his confidence in the success of the mission that had to take place. taken off today. Free added that the CFT is a test flight and, therefore, astronauts and controllers expected unforeseen events to arise.
