BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – NASA announced on Tuesday that the Boeing Starliner crew flight test will launch no earlier than 6:16 p.m. on May 17.
According to a news release, United Launch Alliance plans to roll the rocket, with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, back to its Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday.
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Monday evening’s launch was scrubbed after an oxygen relief valve issue in the ULA Atlas 5′s Centaur upper stage.
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On Tuesday, ULA made the decision to replace a pressure regulation valve on the liquid oxygen tank on the rocket’s upper stage, which requires the rocket and capsule and rocket to be moved from the launchpad and back to the VIF.
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will remain in crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center in quarantine until the next launch opportunity.
The scrubbed attempt adds to Starliner’s long list of delays as Boeing grappled with continued technical issues. The project is running years behind schedule.
No one was aboard Boeing’s two previous Starliner test flights. The first, in 2019, was hit with software trouble so severe that its empty capsule couldn’t reach the station until the second try in 2022. Then last summer, weak parachutes and flammable tape cropped up that needed to be fixed or removed.
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