NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Take a look at now’s focused to launch no sooner than 6:16 p.m. EDT Friday, Might 17, to the Worldwide House Station. Following a radical information evaluate accomplished on Tuesday, ULA (United Launch Alliance) determined to exchange a strain regulation valve on the liquid oxygen tank on the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur higher stage.
ULA plans to roll the rocket, with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, again to its Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral House Drive Station in Florida on Wednesday, Might 8, to start the substitute. The ULA crew will carry out leak checks and purposeful checkouts in assist of the following launch try.
The oscillating conduct of the valve throughout prelaunch operations, finally resulted in mission groups calling a launch scrub on Might 6. After the bottom crews and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams safely exited from House Launch Advanced-41, the ULA crew efficiently commanded the valve closed and the oscillations have been quickly dampened. The oscillations then re-occurred twice throughout gasoline removing operations. After evaluating the valve historical past, information signatures from the launch try, and assessing the dangers relative to continued use, the ULA crew decided the valve exceeded its qualification and mission managers agreed to take away and change the valve.
Mission managers mentioned the small print resulting in the choice to wash the Might 6 launch alternative throughout a news conference shortly after the scrub name at NASA’s Kennedy House Middle in Florida.
Wilmore and Williams will stay in crew quarters at NASA Kennedy in quarantine till the following launch alternative. The duo would be the first to launch aboard Starliner to the house station as a part of the company’s Industrial Crew Program.
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