After scrubbing the launch of Boeing Space’s Starliner spacecraft on Saturday just minutes before liftoff, NASA has announced a new target launch date for the vehicle’s first crewed mission. The spacecraft is now set to launch at 10:52 a.m. ET on Wednesday, June 5, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
In a statement released on Sunday, NASA said that technicians and engineers with ULA spent the weekend assessing the launchpad’s ground support equipment, which encountered issues during Saturday’s countdown, prompting the mission to be postponed.
The issue was traced to a single ground power supply within one of the three redundant chassis that provides power to various computer cards controlling system functions, including the card responsible for the stable replenishment topping valves for the Centaur upper stage. All three of these chassis are required to enter the terminal phase of the launch countdown to ensure crew safety.
As part of the work to resolve the issue, the chassis containing the faulty ground power unit was removed, visually inspected, and replaced with a spare chassis. There were no signs of any physical damage.
A full failure analysis of the power unit will be carried out to better understand the root cause of the incident. All of the hardware is performing as expected following functional checkouts of the new chassis and the cards.
The U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predicts a 90% chance of favorable weather conditions for Wednesday’s launch. If the flight is unable to get underway on that day, there will be another opportunity for liftoff on the following day.
The plan is to fly the Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS). Wilmore and Williams will stay there for a week before returning home in the spacecraft in a parachute-assisted landing.
The Starliner has faced years of delays, mostly over technical issues, and has flown twice before without a crew. The first test, in 2019, failed to reach the ISS, while the second mission, in 2022, successfully docked with the orbital laboratory.
The first crewed flight was supposed to launch on May 6, but just a couple of hours from launch, engineers encountered an issue with the Atlas V rocket. In the following days, a helium leak was found on the Starliner, causing a further delay. Several other launch targets have been and gone.
NASA and Boeing Space – as well as Wilmore and Williams – will be hoping that the much-anticipated mission can finally get underway on Wednesday.
