Boeing Starliner Flight of NASA Astronauts Is Scrubbed
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will have to wait for another day to fly to the International Space Station in an orbital capsule that has already faced years of costly technical delays.
NASA astronauts will have to wait until another day to launch to orbit in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The planned launch for Monday night was called off at 8:34 p.m. Eastern because of a problem with a propellant valve in the second stage of the Atlas V rocket that was to lift the crew to orbit.
It is not yet known if the problem can be easily fixed at the launchpad. If it can be, there is another launch opportunity on Tuesday night. A news conference is expected later this evening, but NASA has not yet announced when it will take place.
The space agency retired its space shuttles in 2011. For nine years, astronauts could get to the International Space Station only aboard Russia’s Soyuz rockets. Then in May 2020, two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, flew to the I.S.S. in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. That capsule has since become the only way to get to orbit from the United States.
During this time, NASA has been waiting on a second vehicle to be ready. That was Starliner, built by the aerospace giant Boeing, and it finally seemed set to launch on its first test flight with astronauts on board after years of technical setbacks and costly delays. Here’s what you need to know about Monday evening’s scrubbed launch attempt:
