Boeing Starliner Flight of NASA Astronauts Is Scrubbed (2024)

Pinned

What happens next with the delayed NASA astronaut launch.

United Launch Alliance, the maker of the Atlas V, said the rocket would be rolled back from the launchpad to replace a valve that regulates pressure in the oxygen tank in the second stage.

That further postponed the first-ever crewed flight of Starliner, a ride for NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Space Station, which has experienced a series of costly delays over the past several years.

About three hours before the scheduled launch time of 10:34 p.m. Eastern time, just as the astronauts arrived at the launchpad, the valve started to buzz at a rate of about 40 times a second. Crews at the launchpad described hearing an “unusual audible” to flight controllers.

The flight preparations continued with Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams boarding the spacecraft. But at 8:34 p.m. Eastern time, two hours before the scheduled liftoff, United Launch Alliance, the company that builds and manages the rocket, called off the flight.

Tory Bruno, the chief executive of U.L.A., said this behavior had been observed previously during some other Atlas V launches, and opening and closing the valve typically stops the buzzing.

But for a launch of astronauts, U.L.A. had made a rule not to do anything that might change the status of the rocket when the astronauts were present, including opening and closing a valve. That was not by itself a dangerous action, but it still would have added uncertainty.

“Our philosophy is we don’t have to change the state of the vehicle when the people are there, so we won’t,” Mr. Bruno said in a Monday night news conference along with officials from NASA and Boeing.

After the astronauts exited Starliner and returned to their crew quarters, the valve was closed and the buzzing stopped. But the oscillations recurred twice as propellant was drained from tanks.

After reviewing the data, U.L.A.’s engineers concluded that the valve had exceeded the limit of the number of times it could be reliably opened and closed and that it needed to be replaced.

Boeing was one of two companies that won a contract to build a spacecraft to fly astronauts to and from the space station several years after NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011. For nine years, astronauts could get to the International Space Station only aboard Russia’s Soyuz rockets.

The other company was SpaceX. In May 2020, two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, flew to the I.S.S. in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. That capsule has since become the only way to get to orbit from the United States.

The development of Starliner took Boeing far longer than it had expected. Technical pitfalls included inadequate software testing, corroded propellant valves, flammable tape and a key component in parachute system that turned out to be weaker than designed. Boeing fixed the problems, and it was finally ready to launch. The delays have left Boeing facing more than $1.4 billion in unexpected charges.

While Monday’s scrubbed flight was caused by the rocket, the postponed launch attempt comes during a tough 2024 for the aerospace giant. Just days into the year, a panel on the body of a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight. The pilots were able to safely land the plane, and there were no major injuries, but the episode has had widespread repercussions for the company, particularly its aviation division.

Niraj Chokshi contributed reporting.

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Wimore is now back in the “white room” with his helmet off. The pad team helped him and Williams put white booties over their flight suit boots, likely to protect them from the ground.

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The Starliner project has cost Boeing $1.4 billion more than it planned to spend.

“Building rockets and spacecraft is no trivial task,” said Ron Epstein, a financial analyst at Bank of America. “It’s just taken Boeing longer and cost them more to do than they thought.”

The setbacks underscore a broader frustration for Boeing’s defense and space business: Fixed-price contracts, under which contractors bear responsibility for higher-than-expected costs. Under a cost-plus contract, on the other hand, the government is responsible for covering unexpected expenses.

Fixed-price contracts are financially risky for companies if costs rise or delays materialize — and Boeing has struggled under them in recent years. Such contracts accounted for about 58 percent of the revenues coming into the defense and space unit last year and the company has said that it is working to limit its reliance on them. (SpaceX, by contrast, has thrived on fixed-price contracts.)

“We have a couple of fixed-price development programs we have to just finish and never do them again,” Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s chief executive, said at an investor conference last summer. “It doesn’t work for us and it doesn’t work for our customers, in my not-so-humble opinion.”

Although the company has faced delays, a Boeing representative said in a statement that the company remains, “committed to providing NASA with a crew access capability to low Earth orbit and that it “will continue to fulfill our contractual obligations.”

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This has been a trying year for Boeing.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all Max 9 jets within the United States for about three weeks, a headache for Alaska and United Airlines, which rely on the plane. The agency also immediately increased its scrutiny of Boeing and limited the rate at which the company can build the Max at its Seattle-area factory.

On Monday, the F.A.A. said it had opened a new investigation into the company after learning from Boeing that it may have skipped some required inspections involving the wings of 787 Dreamliner jets.

Since the Alaska Airlines incident, Boeing has taken steps to assure regulators and the public of the quality of its planes by stepping up inspections, expanding training and taking other measures. The company has since shaken up its leadership: The chairman of its board stepped down and its chief executive said he would leave by the end of the year.

The company is also in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a troubled supplier that makes the body of the Max, and which had been a part of Boeing until it was spun off two decades ago.

The episode further damaged Boeing’s reputation after two fatal crashes, in 2018 and 2019, of Max 8 planes, a smaller variant of the 737 Max 9, in which 346 people died. The Max had been banned globally for nearly two years after those crashes. But from late 2020 when flight resumed up until this year, it had enjoyed a relatively smooth run.

Much of the fallout has been limited to Boeing’s commercial planes business, which is distinct from the company’s other two divisions: One that makes military aircraft, missiles, satellites, spacecraft and rockets, and another that provides maintenance and services to the company’s customers.

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Does NASA need two rides to the space station? Elon Musk says no.

Indeed, on Monday, before Starliner’s launch, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, posted on his social media site, X, “The world doesn’t need another capsule.”

In a separate posting, Mr. Musk sharply criticized Boeing. “Although Boeing got $4.2 billion to develop an astronaut capsule and SpaceX only got $2.6 billion, SpaceX finished 4 years sooner,” he wrote. “Too many non-technical managers at Boeing.”

A Boeing spokeswoman declined to comment.

While Mr. Musk might think Starliner is superfluous, NASA officials have often said it is important to have contingency options if something goes wrong.

“This will give us that additional capability because we always look for a backup,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference on Friday.

Dana Weigel, program manager of the space station for NASA, gave the example of when a Soyuz docked at the space station suffered a coolant leak in 2022.

If the Soyuz were the only means of transportation, that could have led to a situation where the lives of the astronauts were genuinely at risk. But a SpaceX Crew Dragon was also docked there, providing a backup.

“If we had to bring the whole crew home on a SpaceX Dragon, we could have done that,” Ms. Weigel said.

For NASA, the more options it has, the better. If Crew Dragon or Starliner suffered a failure and were grounded, the other would still be available. That lessens the possibility that the United States might again have to rely on Russians and the whims of Vladimir Putin for launching people to space.

“The more dissimilar capabilities you have, the more robust you are for dealing with issues,” Ms. Weigel said.

During the Starliner delays, SpaceX has successfully launched nine Crew Dragon missions for NAS the test flight in May 2020 followed by eight operational missions that carried crews to the space station for six-month stays.

SpaceX has also launched four private astronaut missions using the same Crew Dragons. The first one, Inspiration4, was financed by Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur. While that flight went only to orbit and not to the I.S.S., Axiom Space of Houston has since flown three private astronaut missions to the space station, with a fourth that might launch as soon as August.

Mr. Isaacman is also planning to return to space later this year with another Crew Dragon mission, called Polaris Dawn, which is aiming to include the first spacewalk during a commercial spaceflight.

One reason Wilmore and Williams will have time to watch that big screen is because they have a drive of 20-25 minutes in the astro van. They’re traveling from Kennedy Space Center to a launchpad on neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

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Who are the astronauts on the Starliner flight?

“It almost feels unreal,” Ms. Williams replied.

She was born in Ohio but grew up in Massachusetts. She was a test pilot in the U.S. Navy and has more than 3,000 hours flying 30 different aircraft. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998. She has spent 322 days in space and for a while held the record for total time on spacewalks by a woman.

Mr. Wilmore, a native of Tennessee, was also a Navy test pilot, and he flew combat missions over Iraq and Bosnia in the 1990s. He was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2000. During his two previous missions, he spent a total of 167 days in space.

Their last trips to orbit were years ago.

Ms. Williams had two long-duration stays on the International Space Station, the second ending in November 2012. Mr. Wilmore served as the pilot of a space shuttle mission in 2009, then spent 5 and a half months on the space station from September 2014 to March 2015.

After a glitch-filled test flight in December 2019 with no crew aboard, delays shuffled the astronaut assignments. Indeed, none of the astronauts that NASA named in 2018 to fly on the test flight are on the upcoming test flight.

In 2020, Mr. Wilmore was named commander of the test flight. In 2022, Ms. Williams was shifted to the test flight, serving as the pilot. (She originally was assigned to serve as the commander of the second flight, the first operational one that would take four astronauts to the space station for six months.)

Now, finally, they are about to launch.

During the question-and-answer session, Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams were asked which space food they were looking forward to eating again.

“Chocolate pudding cake,” Mr. Wilmore answered without hesitation. “There’s nothing left to be said. It’s fabulous.”

Ms. Williams added, “I think they still have muffin tops. Those are pretty awesome too.”

Technicians did leak checks on the suits, making them briefly puff up almost like a blue Michelin Man costume.

What is Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft?

At 15 feet in diameter, Starliner is slightly bigger than the Apollo spacecraft. The capsule and the service module — the part of the spacecraft that provides power and propulsion during the flight before being discarded just before landing — are together 16.5 feet in height.

The spacecraft is large enough to carry up to seven astronauts, but NASA missions will carry a crew of four. Boeing has the option of selling a fifth seat to a private customer looking to tag along.

Each Starliner is designed to be used for up to 10 missions; by contrast, a service module burns up in the atmosphere, and a new one is needed for each trip.

Boeing has built three Starliner capsules. The first was used only to demonstrate the ability to quickly fly astronauts to safety in case of an emergency on the launchpad. That capsule will not be used for any missions to orbit.

The Starliner used for this mission previously flew in space in 2020 during the first uncrewed test flight, which was cut short because of technical problems. Sunita Williams, the pilot for this mission, has named the spacecraft Calypso, a nod to the research ship used by Jacques Cousteau, a French undersea explorer.

The third Starliner, still unnamed, was used for the second uncrewed test in 2022 and will fly four astronauts to the space station for the first operational mission, scheduled for next year.