CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is ready for its long-awaited first crewed launch.
That liftoff, which will begin the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission to the International Space Station (ISS), is scheduled for 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) on Saturday (June 1) from the Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral here, atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.
Representatives from NASA, Boeing and ULA provided launch updates during a press conference Friday (May 31), confirming that all systems are in place for Saturday’s launch with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams on board. The mission is intended to continue Starliner’s certification for crew transport on operational missions to the ISS.
Leading up to this first passenger flight, the Starliner has faced a number of delays, both in the past few years and in the past few weeks. A May 6 attempt was aborted about two hours before liftoff, for example, because of a faulty valve in the top of the Atlas V Centaur. This prompted mission managers to return the Starliner and the rocket back to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility (VIF), where engineers discovered a helium leak in the Starliner’s service module.
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Given the location and system interactions on the Starliner, it would be “almost dangerous to work” on the leak, Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial team, said on the call Friday. But members of the launch team decided the leak was small enough not to pose a serious risk to the spacecraft or the CFT mission, and the Atlas V/Starliner package was returned to the launch pad on Thursday (May 30).
“Sometimes for a space flight you plan for contingencies and design the vehicle to have a backup. And in our case, we have a reserve in the helium tank,” Stich said. “We could be dealing with a leak 100 times worse than this. So…we decided the smartest thing to do was to go and do the mission and we could do it safely.’
Adding to the pre-launch drama, a recent anomaly aboard the ISS created a manifest last-minute change before tomorrow’s liftoff: a faulty pump in the station’s urine processor module shut down the ability to convert the ISS crew’s urine back into potable water. A replacement for that part was already scheduled to be launched on the next Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo mission in August, but an unexpected pump failure forced an expedited delivery, NASA officials said Friday.
“We are in a position where we have to store urine on board the station,” Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS program manager, said during Friday’s press conference. “We have bags and tanks that we have there for that purpose, but we have a limited inventory.”
With the imminent arrival of two new astronauts to the station – CFT’s Willmore and Williams – NASA made the decision to get the required part into orbit as soon as possible. But a small sacrifice had to be made.
To maintain a constant mass for the Starliner mission, a payload roughly equal to the weight of the spare — about 140 pounds (64 kilograms) — had to be removed. In this case, Wilmore and Williams’ luggage took the hit, leaving the pair without spare clothes once they reached the space station. Fortunately, they won’t be completely without an outfit change.
“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 system checks and generally putting the Starliner through its paces. The Starliner and its two-man crew are expected to land no earlier than Monday, June 10, at Willcox Playa, east of Tucson, Arizona.
Liftoff from the ISS this morning will be around 5:50 a.m. EDT (950 GMT), landing at approximately 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT). If weather problems or other delays occur, there is a backup landing on June 11 at the 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 off at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) tomorrow (June 1), with a predicted 90% chance of fair 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’s rendezvous and docking with the ISS, set for around 1:50 p.m. EDT (1750 GMT) on Sunday (June 2).
