Cape Canaveral: The first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was halted two hours before new safety concerns emerged, prompting officials to delay a high-altitude test mission to the International Space Station on Monday.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams huddled in their seats preparing for liftoff when the “scrub” call came in, to give engineers time to investigate abnormal oxygen pressure readings in the rocket’s second stage.
“We’re going to stop trying to fly tonight,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said. “As I said before, NASA’s first priority is safety. We leave when we’re ready.”
The next launch date is Tuesday night, but it is not clear how big the problem is and whether the rocket can still be fixed on the runway. NASA said it would hold a late-night news conference to provide updates.
The mission has been delayed for years and comes at a difficult time for Boeing, as a security crisis engulfs the manufacturer’s commercial aviation division.
NASA conducted successful tests of the Starliner, so the crew could approve a second commercial vehicle to transport cargo to the ISS.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX achieved this feat with the Dragon capsule, ending its dependence on Russian rockets nearly a decade after the Space Shuttle program ended.
Dressed in bright blue Boeing spacesuits, the astronauts were helped off the spacecraft, then left the flight deck at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and returned to their quarters.
Navy-trained pilots and veterans of the space program, Wilmore and Williams have each been to the ISS twice, once on the shuttle and then aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
