Boeing Deepens NASA Starliner Probe, Prompting More Delays

Boeing’s second chance to test launch its troubled astronaut capsule to the International Space Station was delayed again, possibly until the middle of 2022, as NASA and the aerospace giant go to new lengths to investigate problems with the spacecraft’s fuel valves.

The postponement adds to the woes of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, a striking contrast with SpaceX, the private company founded by Elon Musk. Its passenger spacecraft, Crew Dragon, has lofted crews to orbit four times in the past two years, with a fifth scheduled on Halloween.

The Starliner capsule came within hours of launching to the space station on an Atlas 5 rocket in August, as part of a 10-day test mission without humans on board. The goal was to demonstrate that the spacecraft was safe enough to fly NASA astronauts. But some of Starliner’s fuel valves, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, a maker of rocket engines, didn’t open as designed during last-minute launch preparations, prompting engineers to roll the rocket back into its tower and, eventually, the capsule back to its factory.

“We had no indication that there was going to be any problem with these valves,” John Vollmer, the manager of Boeing’s commercial crew operations, told reporters on Tuesday. The valves are part of an ornate network of plumbing in a detachable trunk called the “service module” that houses Starliner’s propulsion gear. The components worked during previous tests, including a trial of the spacecraft’s emergency abort system in 2019, Mr. Vollmer added.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/science/nasa-boeing-starliner.html