An Atlas 5 rocket carrying astronauts for the first time was fueled for blastoff Monday night to boost Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crew ferry shi

Planned crewed launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft scrubbed

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2024-05-07 02:30:12

An Atlas 5 rocket carrying astronauts for the first time was fueled for blastoff Monday night to boost Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crew ferry ship into orbit for its first piloted test flight. But trouble with a valve in the rocket's upper stage forced mission managers to order a scrub just two hours before takeoff.

It was a frustrating disappointment for commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams , who were in the process of strapping in for launch when the scrub was announced. The moment brought to mind one of Wilmore's favorite sayings, "you'd rather be on the ground wishing you were in space than in space and wishing you were on the ground."

It was not immediately clear when Boeing and rocket-builder United Launch Alliance might be able to make another attempt, but engineers will first have to figure out what caused an oxygen relief valve in the rocket's Centaur upper stage to "chatter" during the late stages of fueling and what might be required to fix it.

Running years behind schedule and more than a billion dollars over budget, the Starliner is Boeing's answer to SpaceX's Crew Dragon, an already operational spacecraft that has carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of them to the space station.