But why has the Starliner capsule still not taken off with its first astronauts?

Undermined by years of delay, the Starliner project was finally supposed to take its first astronauts to the International Space Station this May. Still, this is new hardware, and new problems appeared once on the launch pad. The shot is currently postponed to 1^er June.

It will soon be 10 years (in September) since NASA chose Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules to regain the capacity to take its astronauts to the International Space Station. This decision was then postponed until January 2015, because the ousted industrialist, Sierra Space, requested an investigation. Since then, the story has taken a bitter turn for Starliner. NASA has retained its desire to operate two different manned capsules to have independent systems and be able to compete, but Crew Dragon has taken 13 different crews into orbit since 2020, while Boeing has suffered from postponement problems.

We had to wait until 2022 for the 2^e unmanned test flight to the ISS was a success, and the troubles were not yet over. Changes of parachutes, the incredible discovery of flammable adhesive tape used on all internal systems… The road was long and difficult. Also expensive for Boeing, because NASA paid a fixed price, all overruns are for the industrialist (more than 1 billion dollars already). Last winter, Boeing declared its capsule ready. And a space is finally cleared in the calendar this month of May.

The infernal sequence

Starliner was scheduled to take off on May 6, 2024, but the weather decided not to cooperate. A day later, when the astronauts were already on board, they had to disembark because United Launch Alliance noted a very small anomaly indicating a leak on a valve in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage.

A few days passed, and after a meeting with NASA officials, the decision was made to bring Starliner and its Atlas V rocket under its assembly gantry to be able to access the different elements. But unfortunately, during an inspection after repair, another leak was detected, this one directly on the capsule! Indeed, its service module (which provides it with its air, electricity and propulsion resources) suffers from a very small but real helium leak on a thruster. Bad luck? Lack of youth? Overabundance of precautions? Regardless, the teams spent this entire week observing and documenting the situation.

We will have to decide

There is no question for NASA to send its two astronauts, veterans “Butch” Wilmore and “Suni” Williams as long as doubts remain. Other systems for a first manned flight already present enough risks (it was the same thing for Crew Dragon).

The launch date is now tentatively set for 1^er June. But until then, the American agency, Boeing and ULA will meet to review the problem on May 28 and give the green light or not to return to the launch area. It will probably be necessary to decide what to do between sending the capsule into orbit or removing it from its launcher for inspection and changing the equipment. But in this case, Starliner could face several months of postponements again… Will it finally find its way to the ISS?

Source : SpaceNews