The Boeing Starliner
Failed engine test seen as setback in battle with SpaceX
spacecraft’s first flight is delayed for months because of a problem found during an engine test.
A failed test of the abort engines on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will delay the company’s maiden uncrewed test flight into late this year or early next year, the company has confirmed.
The delay means the spacecraft will not be ready for a crewed test flight until at least mid-2019.
The setback comes as Boeing is entrenched in a competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to deliver astronauts to the space station, replacing the Russian rockets now used for that purpose.
Today, NASA is expected to announce which of four astronauts will ride on test flights and maiden voyages of the Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which arrived at Cape Canaveral last month.
It is still not clear which company, Boeing or SpaceX, will launch humans first. SpaceX has not announced a timetable for its project.
During a June test of the engines, four of its eight valves did not close as expected when given the abort command, company officials said Wednesday.
The abort engines would fire up on the Starliner in the event of a “launch vehicle failure.” Essentially, the engines are necessary to get the Starliner capsule away from the rocket if it’s expected to blow up or fail in any way.
“During the startup of that test, all engines responded nominally,” said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew programs, during a conference call. “At approximately 1.5 seconds, we issued a shutdown command to the engines and several of the abort engine valves failed to fully close.”
Mulholland said the company partnered with NASA for an investigation into the failure. He said the test program’s discovery of the faulty valves means it did its job.
Mulholland said the Atlas V launch vehicle for the mission is launch-ready and should ship to Florida before the end of this year.
The Starliner program has completed 80 percent of its testing with “tremendous progress” made as it gets prepared for flight, Mulholland said.
“We are confident we have identified the root cause and are implementing corrective actions now,” he said.
The Starliner program has seen repeated delays.
At one point last year, it was expected that it would have its first uncrewed test flight in June of this year, followed by a crewed flight this month.
The optimistic timeline had the Starliner set to dock at the International Space Station by December.