Shillong, June 3: Boeing’s Starliner is set to make a third attempt to launch its crew test flight on June 5, NASA announced on Monday.
“NASA’s BoeingSpace Crew Flight Test mission teams are preparing to support a launch at 10:52 a.m. ET June 5,” NASA said in a post on X.com.
The mission’s second attempt on June 1 was scrubbed at the last minute.
NASA said that it was scrubbed as mission officials at United Launch Alliance (ULA) “identified an issue with a single ground power supply that encountered issues during the countdown.”
The ULA team found the power supply within one of the three redundant chassis that provides power to a subset of computer cards controlling various system functions.
They also identified 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.
“On Sunday, the chassis, containing the faulty ground power unit, was replaced, and ULA confirmed all hardware is performing normally,” NASA said.
The company has been facing a series of setbacks.
The first manned mission to be launched on May 7 was scrubbed two hours before lift-off due to a valve issue on the upper stage of the ULA’s Atlas V rocket. Following the scrub, the launch slipped to May 10 and later to May 21 and then to May 25 due to a helium leak.
Meanwhile, the company also has a “backup launch opportunity on June 6.”
The spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Indian-origin Sunita Williams to the space station for about a week before returning to Earth aboard the reusable crew capsule.
The Starliner mission aims to carry astronauts and cargo for future NASA missions to Low Earth Orbit and beyond. (IANS)
