First attempt of Boeing Starliner mission with humans aboard is scrubbed

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will have to wait at least another day for its first human spaceflight as teams scrubbed a Monday night launch attempt.

With just over two hours on the countdown clock before a planned 10:34 p.m. Eastern time liftoff, an issue with an oxygen relief valve led to the call while NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were strapped into the spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 awaiting the start of the Crew Flight Test mission to the International Space Station.

The problematic valve was located on the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas rocket.

The pair along with 750 pounds of supplies were to arrive to the station early Wednesday at 12:46 a.m. to begin an eight-day stay on board before a return flight home as early as May 15 that would have a primary landing site of White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

“This is a test flight. That brings to bear all the things that the title implies,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Because it is a test flight, we give extra attention. They’re checking out a lot of the systems — the life support, the manual control, all of those things that you want to be checked out.

“That’s why we put two test pilots on board, and of course the resumes of Butch and Suni are extensive,” he said.

Both astronauts are retired Navy and have flown to space two times previous each, both on the space shuttle and on Russia Soyuz spacecraft with stays on board the ISS. Wilmore is the commander for this flight and joined NASA in 2000. Williams is pilot and joined in 1998.

“We have been through quite the process over the years,” Wilmore said on a media call last Wednesday. “It’s been really a thrilling process. I mean, to be two Navy trained test pilots and be into the process of this first flight, and all that goes into that and all the discovery that we’ve had over the years and working together with our Boeing counterparts, test after test, evaluation after evaluation. Every single day is different, and that’s been intriguing, and thrilling along the way.”

Williams and Wilmore had been targeting several liftoff dates in 2023 before hardware delays required fixes pushing the attempt into 2024.

“It almost feels unreal,” Williams said. “Like we’ve had a couple launch dates and we’ve been like, ‘OK, we’re ready to go,’ but now it’s like, heck five, five days ... which means it is actually finally real, and I sort of have to pinch myself a little bit to understand we’re actually, we’re going.”

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