Boeing’s Cursed Starliner Mission Delayed Due to ‘Small Helium Leak’

It ’s deja vu all over again . Boeing ’s long - anticipate Starliner mission has been postponed for a 2d sentence due to a newly discovered publication with the spacecraft ’s service faculty .

On Tuesday , Boeingannouncedthat liftoff for the first crewed test flight of its Starliner spacecraft is now targeted for May 21 at 4:43 p.m. ET . The society was originally targeting May 6 for the liftoff of Starliner on display board United Launch Alliance ’s ( ULA ) Atlas V rocket , but a last minute anomaly with one of the skyrocket ’s press valvesdelayed the crew test flight to May 17 . ULA ’s team successfully replaced the valve on Saturday , but now a new trouble has come up to push back the trajectory once again .

“ Starliner teams are working to resolve a pocket-size helium wetting detected in the spacecraft ’s serving module traced to a rim on a single chemical reaction control system thruster , ” Boeing wrote in a instruction . “ NASA and Boeing are developing ballistic capsule testing and functional solvent to address the issue . ”

The team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center working to mate Starliner’s crew module with its service module in January 2023.

The team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center working to mate Starliner’s crew module with its service module in January 2023.Photo: NASA

The spacecraft consists of a recyclable crew condensation and an expendable service module . Helium is used in the ballistic capsule ’s pusher systems to allow for the thruster to fire without being combustible or toxic . To help purpose the issue , Boeing will test the spacecraft by pressurizing the propulsion scheme as it does before launching , and then let the helium system to vent by nature . delegacy teams will also bet over the datum of the last launching endeavor to track any other yield , according to Boeing .

Boeing ’s Crewed Flight Testis part of NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program and is meant to transmit crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station ( ISS ) under a$4.3 billioncontract with the space way . NASA ’s other commercial collaborator , SpaceX , just launched its eighth crowd to the space station .

This is the former in a drawing string of bad luck and failures that have marred the Starliner computer program since its inception about a decade ago . Starliner ’s first uncrewed test flight in 2019managed to reach space , but a software mechanisation glitch caused the ballistic capsule to incinerate excess fuel , preventing it from making it to the ISS .

The island of Simushir, with four volcanoes dotted across it.

The botched first trajectory propel NASA to call for a second test flight of the empty ballistic capsule before a work party ride on board . In May 2022 , Boeing completedthe Orbital Flight Test-2 ( OFT-2 ) , but OFT-2 suffer a few singultus , including thefailure of a pusher used for orbital maneuvering . Despite the underage anomaly , NASA decide to go onward with a crew test flight anyway .

Boeing ’s crew Starliner launch was initially go under for February 2023 , then postponed to late April , and finally reschedule for July 21 , 2023 . A few weeks before liftoff , however , the companionship announced that it wasstanding down from the launch attemptto address newfound issues with the crew fomite , include a statute mile ’s worth of flammable magnetic tape that had to be manually removed .

If we were n’t already nervous for the first launch attempt of Starliner ’s crewed flight , there are more than enough reason to make us worry at this item .

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