The long-awaited first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft was called off for at least 24 hours over a technical glitch with the Atlas V rocket that was being readied to launch the new astronaut capsule to orbit on May 6 night, Report informs referring to Reuters.
The CST-100 Starliner's inaugural voyage carrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) has been highly anticipated and much-delayed as Boeing scrambles to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX for a greater share of lucrative NASA business.
It comes two years after the gumdrop-shaped capsule completed its first test flight to the orbital laboratory without humans aboard. The Starliner's first uncrewed flight to the ISS in 2019 ended in failure.
Its latest flight was scrubbed with less than two hours left in the countdown as the capsule stood poised for blastoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.
The postponement, attributed to an issue with a valve in the Atlas rocket's second stage, was announced during a live NASA webcast.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno said the valve, which controls fuel pressure in the rocket stage responsible for pushing Starliner toward orbit, had been “buzzing” audibly in a way the company had noticed before other non-crewed missions. Launch officials decided to delay the countdown under more sensitive rules for an astronaut mission.
The next available launch windows for the mission are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights.
A ULA team will work overnight to test the valve and examine how tolerable the buzzing is. If they can’t come to a conclusion by about 2 p.m. ET on May 7, they would rule out a launch that night and look to Thursday.
The two-member crew - NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore, 61, and Sunita "Suni" Williams, 58 - had been strapped into their seats aboard the spacecraft for about an hour before launch activities were suspended.