CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is ready for its long-awaited first crewed launch.
That liftoff, which will launch the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), is scheduled for 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) on Saturday (June 1) from the Force Station. Space Cape Canaveral here. on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.
NASA, Boeing and ULA officials provided updates on the launch during a press call on Friday (May 31), confirming that all systems are “go” for Saturday’s launch with NASA astronauts -s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. The mission aims to further the certification of the Starliner to transport crew on operational missions to the ISS.
Leading up to this staggered first passenger flight, the Starliner has faced a series of delays, both in recent years and in recent weeks. A May 6 attempt was scrapped about two hours before liftoff, for example, because of a valve malfunction in the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage. That prompted mission managers to return the Starliner and the rocket back to the facility. ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility (VIF), where engineers discovered a helium leak in the Starliner’s service module.
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Given its location and the interactions of systems inside the Starliner, it would be “almost unsafe to work” on the leak, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said during the call Friday. But members of the launch team determined that the leak was small enough not to pose a serious risk to the spacecraft or the CFT mission, and the Atlas V/Starliner stack returned to the launch pad on Thursday (May 30).
“Sometimes in spaceflight, you plan for contingencies and you design the vehicle to have margin. And, in our case, we have margin in the helium tank,” Stich said. “We could handle a leak that’s 100 times worse than this. So … we concluded that the smartest thing to do was to go fly the mission, and we could fly it safely.”
Adding to the pre-launch drama, a recent anomaly aboard the ISS created an apparent last-minute change before tomorrow’s liftoff: A malfunctioning pump in the station’s urine processor assembly has stopped the ability to return the crew’s urine of ISS back into drinking water. A replacement for the part was already scheduled to launch on the upcoming Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo mission in August, but the unexpected pump failure has necessitated an expedited delivery, NASA officials announced Friday.
“We’re in a position where we have to store urine on the station,” Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS program manager, said during Friday’s press conference. “We have bags and tanks that we set up there for that purpose, but we have limited inventory.”
With the imminent arrival of two new astronauts on the station – Wilmore and Williams on the CFT – NASA made the decision to get the necessary part into orbit as soon as possible. But a small sacrifice had to be made.
To maintain a consistent mass for the Starliner mission, payload roughly equal in weight to the replacement part—about 140 pounds (64 kilograms)—had to be removed. In the event, Wilmore and Williams’ luggage was hit, leaving the pair without spare clothes once they reach the space station. Thankfully, they won’t be completely without a change of outfit.
“We have a lot of generic emergency clothing on board. So it’s not a problem,” Weigel said.
Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to spend eight days aboard the space station, performing systems checks and generally putting the Starliner through its paces. The Starliner and its crew of two are expected to land no earlier than Monday, June 10, at Willcox Playa, east of Tucson, Arizona.
Liftoff from the ISS that morning will be around 5:50 a.m. EDT (950 GMT), with landing around 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT). If weather problems or other delays arise, there is a backup landing option on June 11 at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, with a landing time that day around 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT).
The CFT is scheduled to lift at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) tomorrow (June 1), with a predicted 90% chance of favorable weather. NASA’s live broadcast begins at 8:15 a.m. (1215 GMT), which you can watch here on Space.com. Coverage will continue through the Starliner rendezvous and docking with the ISS, set for around 1:50 p.m. EDT (1750 GMT) on Sunday (June 2).
