John Raoux/AP
Boeing’s Starliner capsule lifts off Wednesday atop an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on a mission to the International Space Station.
CNN
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After a successful launch that was a decade in the making, Boeing’s Starliner mission is navigating new challenges en route to the International Space Station, according to NASA.
The space agency said late Wednesday in a post on X that two additional helium leaks had been detected in the vehicle. A helium leak had been detected prior to takeoff and was deemed acceptable.
“Teams have identified three helium leaks in the spacecraft. One of them was previously discussed before the flight along with a management plan,” NASA shared in the post. “The other two are new since the spacecraft arrived in orbit. Two of the affected helium valves have been closed and the spacecraft remains stable.”
A related exchange had occurred earlier in the NASA broadcast.
Just as astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams were about to sleep for the night, mission control informed them that they needed to close two valves due to new helium leaks.
“Looks like we’ve detected some more helium leaks,” mission control told the astronauts, as heard on the broadcast. Controllers then walked the crew through the plan to close the valves.
“We’re about to… find out exactly what you mean by another helium leak, so give it to us,” Wilmore told them.
“Butch, I’m sorry. We’re still piecing the story together,” mission control replied.
NASA and Boeing have since determined that the crew is safe and told them to sleep while they continue to look at the data. The crew was supposed to sleep for nine hours, but the troubleshooting effort was interrupted by an hour’s rest.
“We’ve got some issues to look at overnight, with the helium leaks that were just mentioned, and we’ve got a lot of smart people here on the ground who are going to take a look at these things and keep an eye on them, but the vehicle is in a configuration now where they are safe to fly,” Boeing aerospace engineer Brandon Burroughs said in the NASA broadcast.
Meanwhile, “the crew continues to make their way to the (ISS) and is in a sleep period,” according to the post from NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
It’s still unclear what the impact of the leaks will be, but all indications are that the plan is still for the Starliner to dock with the International Space Station on Thursday.
The long-awaited Starliner journey lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket on Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The historic launch marked the first time a spacecraft has carried a crew into space.
The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States’ options for transporting astronauts to the space station under the Commercial Program of the NASA Crew. The federal agency’s initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
The flight marks just the sixth inaugural flight of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted at a press conference in May.
“It started with Mercury, then Gemini, then Apollo, Space Shuttle, then (SpaceX’s) Dragon — and now Starliner,” Nelson said.
Williams also made history as the first woman to fly such a mission.
“This is another milestone in this incredible NASA story,” Nelson said Wednesday after launch. “And I want to give my personal congratulations to the whole team that went through a lot of trials and tribulations. But they persevered, and that’s what we do at NASA. We don’t leave until it’s right.”
After spending just over 24 hours traveling to the space station, Williams and Wilmore were expected to spend about eight days living in the orbiting laboratory, joining the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already aboard.
A number of problems caused previous crewed launch attempts, on May 6 and June 1, to be scrapped.
Two hours before the May 6 launch attempt, engineers identified a problem with a valve in the second stage, or upper section, of the Atlas V rocket, which was built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. . The entire assembly, including the rocket and spacecraft, was withdrawn from the launch pad for testing and repairs.
The teams also worked through a small helium leak inside the spacecraft’s service module and a “design vulnerability” in the propulsion system.
After solving problems with the initial helium leak in May, mission specialists determined that it did not pose a threat to the flight. During the countdown to launch Wednesday morning, crews monitored the leak and reported no problems.
Starliner was just 3 minutes and 50 seconds from liftoff Saturday afternoon when an automatic hold was triggered by the ground launch sequence, or computer that launches the rocket.
United Launch Alliance technicians and engineers evaluated the ground support equipment over the weekend, examining three large computers housed inside a shelter at the base of the launch pad. Each computer is identical, providing triple redundancy to ensure the safe launch of manned missions.
Engineers isolated the issue that halted Saturday’s launch attempt to a single ground power supply inside one of the computers, which provides power to the computer cards responsible for key countdown events, according to an update distributed by NASA.
They removed the computer and replaced it with a spare.