NASA and Boeing set a new date for the first crewed test flight of the Starliner spacecraft despite an unresolved issue with a gas leak that was discovered earlier this month. The Starliner Crewed Flight Test is now for liftoff on June 1 at 12:25 p.m.
ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft will ride on board United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rocket, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS). This is the fourth launch date announced within a span of less than a month.
The company was originally targeting May 6 for the liftoff of Starliner but a last minute anomaly with one of the Atlas V rocket’s pressure valves . Just days before the launch, however, Starliner teams in the spacecraft’s service module, prompting them to push the launch to May 21 before it was delayed indefinitely. During this period, engineering teams were supposed to be fixing the small gas leak on the spacecraft.
Rather than fixing the issue, NASA and Boeing have chosen to proceed with flying the astronaut crew on the leaky Starliner spacecraft, throwing caution to the wind. When asked why they’ve chosen not to resolve the issue, Boeing’s vice president Mark Nappi said that it would require taking apart the Starliner spacecraft at its factory, AFP . The spacecraft consists of a reusable crew capsule and an expendable service module.
Helium is used in the spacecraft’s thruster systems to allow the thrusters.
