Welp, Boeing’s Starliner got a lot closer this time.
The astronauts were on board, the hatch had been sealed, and NASA, Boeing, United Launch Alliance and the astronauts themselves were just three minutes and 50 seconds away from making history on Saturday, when it happened: The ground launch sequencer on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida triggered an automatic hold.
Commentators on NASA’s online livestream went silent as the crew access arm moved back toward the 172-foot-tall structure, comprised of the United Launch Alliance-constructed Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew capsule atop it. Starliner’s first crewed test flight, the one that was supposed to happen back in 2017, was being scrubbed. Again.
Inside the cockpit, Williams and Wilmore just laughed.
Of course, at this point it would have been more of a shock if this historic flight, which will complete the final test phase of Boeing’s $4.2 billion contract with NASA to develop a commercial spacecraft to haul astronauts to and from the International Space Station, had actually lifted off.
After all, the project is years behind schedule, has been beset by malfunctions with software and hardware, as we’ve previously noted.
This isn’t even their first failure to launch. Early last month they went through something similar when the May 6 launch was abruptly scrubbed due to a valve issue. Then, engineers discovered a small helium leak, followed by “design vulnerability” in the propulsion system.
NASA continued to announce tentative new dates throughout the month, but longtime astronauts Williams and Wilmore were back in Houston shortly after the leak was discovered. They stayed there — training and in quarantine but close to their families – only returning to Florida last Tuesday when it seemed likely that there would be a launch.
And there nearly was.
As the countdown clock started rolling, everything was unfolding smoothly at first. Wilmore, the mission commander, and Williams, the pilot, donned their royal blue Boeing-designed spacesuits. The duo handed out orange roses to family, friends and coworkers as they made their way to the van that would take them to the launchpad.
Waving to onlookers, they clambered in and settled down to watch Top Gun while a caravan motored them to the launchpad. (They also surprised their Johnson Space Center coworkers by arranging to have breakfast tacos delivered.)
It all went off without a hitch, and the astronauts found themselves settled into the capsule more than 30 minutes of schedule.
However, a flurry of engineer radio chatter that erupted about two hours from launch time, hinted at the tension of this historic flight. Commentators went silent as engineers worked to understand and resolve an instrumentation issue that was affecting the upper stage Centaur rocket’s (a propulsion system that operates at high altitude with low atmospheric pressure) upper valves that control the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen replenishment. Officials were front and center, eager to offer reassurance.
“The crew is in no danger whatsoever,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno explained as engineers continued to rattle back and forth on the radio in the background. “But we like to have redundancy.”
Once that had been resolved, Dana Hutcherson, NASA’s deputy program manager for the Commercial Crew Program, appeared on the livestream, noting that the “helium anomaly,” a leak that still hasn’t been fixed, remained within acceptable rates ahead of the flight.
“We’re happy that we’ve discussed that at length and planned out our procedures and how we would react,” Hutcherson said as the countdown moved into its final hour. “The teams have been working night and day to make sure we went through every procedure, every process to make sure everything is okay.”
Concerns about issues with the astronaut suit fans, which help air circulate while they’re wearing the spacesuits, were just as eagerly and rapidly fixed up.
As the retractable arm moved away, Wilmore addressed the historic mission they were about to undertake. “This is a great day to be proud of your nation,” Wilmore said, growing visibly emotional as the clock dropped to less than four minutes to liftoff. “We are one nation under God indivisible and when we work together, we can do some wonderful things.”
And then, well, it just didn’t happen.
It’s still unclear what exactly happened to trigger the hold, a question engineers are furiously working to answer. The plan is to regroup, reset and try to get Starliner off the launchpad.
NASA officials skipped Sunday’s launch window since they’re still working to understand what went wrong on Saturday. The next launch windows are at 9:52 a.m. (CDT), Wednesday and 9:29 a.m. (CDT), Thursday.
“This is a significant launch of a test of a brand-new human rated space craft,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson observed in the hours leading up to liftoff. “There have only been six in the human history of NASA.”
As of this moment, there are still only six, but maybe Starliner will finally join the club soon. It might even happen this week. Maybe.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
