New Date Set: NASA Pushes Back Astronaut Sunita Williams’ Space Mission
Boeing’s Starliner which was called off yesterday has now been postponed for a week. Boeing was set to launch first astronaut launch which was set to take Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams for a week long visit to the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA said that the mission has been pushed to launch on May 17 after engineers said a faulty rocket valve needs to be replaced for the high-stakes mission.
The test has already faced years of delays and comes at a challenging time for Boeing, as a safety crisis engulfs the century-old aerospace titan’s commercial aviation arm.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were seated and ready for liftoff on Monday night when the decision was made to abort the launch. Earlier, United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin responsible for the rocket, announced that the launch would be postponed to at least May 10th. However, upon further analysis, it was discovered that a valve had undergone excessive wear and needed to be replaced. As a result, the rocket will be rolled back to its hangar for the necessary repairs.
“NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test now is targeted to launch no earlier than 6:16 p.m. EDT Friday, May 17,” the US space agency said in a blog post.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were scheduled to lift off aboard Boeing’s Starliner crew where they were to stay for about a week. NASA is banking on Starliner’s success as it hopes for a second commercial vehicle to carry crews to the orbital outpost. In 2020, Elon Musk’s SpaceX accomplished this milestone using its Dragon capsule, putting an end to nearly a decade of reliance on Russian rockets after the Space Shuttle program was discontinued.
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