NASA photo: ULA scrubs launch of Atlas V and Starliner spacecraft
UPDATE: ULA is now targeting Friday, May 17th at 5:15 CDT for the next launch attempt for Starliner on a ULA Atlas V rocket. ULA teams will roll the rocket back to their integration facility to change out the faulty valve.
Launch teams with United Launch Alliance scrubbed Monday night's scheduled liftoff of the company's Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida due to a technical glitch.
The rocket was to launch the first crewed flight of Boeing's new Starliner capsule to the ISS.
An anomaly was detected in an oxygen relief valve on the Centaur upper stage of the rocket. NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were already inside the Starliner capsule when the call was made to scrub, which happened about two hours from the scheduled launch time of 9:34 CDT. They were helped out of the capsule and taken to NASA crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center.
The Atlas V booster is made at ULA's rocket factory in Decatur, Alabama, then shipped to the ULA launch facility at CCSFS on Florida's east coast. According to ULA, this will mark the 100th launch of an Atlas V, which has launched many spacecraft, but never a human crew.
This flight, the Crew Flight Test mission, is the first with humans onboard. Williams and Wilmore will test all functions of the spacecraft as they travel to the International Space Station, and then return home about two weeks later.
NASA hopes to certify Starliner for use as a redundant, reliable crew transport option to low earth orbit as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program. Starliner will join the SpaceX Crew Dragon, which, right now, is the only other U.S. option.Ìý
ULA, along with Boeing and NASA, will decide on the date and time for the next launch attempt, which ULA says will be attempted no earlier than Friday.
