CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is ready for its long-awaited first crewed launch.
The launch, which will launch the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission to the International Space Station (ISS), is scheduled for Saturday (June 1) at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here, atop an Atlas rocket At United Launch Alliance (ULA).
NASA, Boeing and ULA officials provided an update on the launch during a press call Friday (May 31), confirming that it’s all systems go for Saturday’s launch with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. The goal of the mission is to deepen the certification of the Starliner for crew transportation on operational missions to the ISS.
Before this first shakedown passenger flight, the Starliner faced a series of delays, both over the past few years and over the past few weeks. The May 6 attempt was scrubbed about two hours before liftoff due to, for example, a malfunctioning valve in the Centaur Atlas V upper stage. This led mission managers to return the Starliner and rocket back to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility (VIF), where engineers discovered a helium leak in Starliner service module.
Related: First Boeing Starliner Astronaut Launch: Live Updates
Because of its location and system interactions inside the Starliner, it would be “almost dangerous to work on” the leak, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said during a call Friday. However, 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 pod was taken back to the launch pad on Thursday (May 30).
“Sometimes for spaceflight you plan for contingencies and design the vehicle to have a reserve. And in our case, we have a reserve in the helium tank,” Stich said. “We could handle a leak 100 times worse than this one. So…we decided the smartest thing to do was fly the mission and we could manage it safely.”
Adding to the pre-launch drama was a recent anomaly aboard the ISS that caused an apparent last-minute change ahead of tomorrow’s launch: A malfunctioning pump in the station’s urine processor assembly halted the ISS crew’s ability to convert its urine back into drinking water. A replacement for that part had already been scheduled for launch on the next Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo mission in August, but an unexpected pump failure required an expedited delivery, NASA officials announced Friday.
“We’re in a position where we have to store urine on board the station,” Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS program manager, said during a press conference Friday. “We have bags and tanks that we put up there for that purpose, but we have limited supplies.
With the arrival of two new astronauts on the station – Wilmore and Williams on the CFT – approaching, NASA decided to get the necessary component into orbit as soon as possible. But a small sacrifice had to be made.
To maintain a consistent weight for the Starliner mission, a payload roughly equal to the weight of the spare part—about 140 pounds (64 kilograms)—had to be removed. In this case, Wilmore and Williams’ luggage was hit, leaving the pair without spare clothes once they reach the space station. Fortunately, they won’t be completely without a change of clothes.
“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 testing the Starliner. The Starliner and its two-person crew are expected to land at Willcox Playa, east of Tucson, Arizona, as early as Monday, June 10.
Disconnection from the ISS will be around 5:50 a.m. EDT (950 GMT) that morning, with landing at approximately 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT). If there are weather problems or other delays, there is a backup landing 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 start tomorrow (June 1) at 12:25 EDT (1625 GMT) with a 90% chance of fair weather forecast. 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, which is set for Sunday (June 2) at approximately 1:50 p.m. EDT (1750 GMT).