Cape Canaveral. Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams’ third space flight had to be postponed at the last minute. In fact, she was part of the first crew to go into space with Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule. However, the long-awaited test flight was canceled on Tuesday due to technical issues. The suspension was announced during a NASA live webcast due to valve problems with the rocket’s second stage.
The Boeing Starliner was scheduled to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8.04 am IST. The two-member crew — NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore, 61, and Sunita Williams, 58 — were strapped into their seats in the spacecraft about an hour before launch activities were suspended. They will be helped out of the capsule by technicians to await the second launch attempt.
Both were to be launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida using a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V rocket, with liftoff scheduled for 8.04 am on Tuesday.
Williams, who has been waiting in line for commercial crewed flights for nearly a decade, was initially assigned to the mission in 2015 because of his extensive experience in spacecraft development. He was later appointed to the CFT mission in 2022. The next available launch window for the mission is Tuesday night, but no decision was immediately made on when the second liftoff attempt would be made.
During the roughly 10-day mission, Wilmore and Williams will intensively test Starliner’s systems and capabilities, paving the way for the spacecraft to begin operational crew flights to the space station. The successful completion of this crewed flight test will bring Starliner one step closer to regularly transporting personnel to and from the ISS, further strengthening the United States’ independent access to space.
Tags: NASA, Space News
First published: May 7, 2024, 08:53 IST