Boeing will not delay the first manned Starliner flight again: it will launch the ship with a “small helium leak”

Next Saturday, June 1 at 2:25 pm EDT (4:25 p.m., Spanish peninsular time), Starliner will be launched into space with a rocket Atlas V from the SLC-41 ramp from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If everything goes according to plan, it will be the first manned flight of Boeing’s spacecraft that will compete with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

But this mission, which will transport two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), will begin with a small unrepaired helium leak. As reported by CBSthe technical problem was detected after United Launch Alliance (ULA) canceled the launch on May 6 to change an oxygen valve in the upper stage (Centaur) of the rocket.

Flight with helium leak

NASA and Boeing have concluded that the slight gas leak present in the service module affects only one of the 28 thrusters of the RCS control system, so it does not represent a safety problem. security. Steve Stich, head of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said the leak might not be a problem even if it increased 100-fold.

Stich wanted to make it clear that they have not taken this matter lightly. It took the team almost a month to analyze the problem and determine the risks. It is curious, however, that it was not decided to completely resolve this problem before launch, but it seems that the efforts necessary to carry out the repair were not worth it.

Mark Nappi, director of the Boeing Commercial Crew Program, he pointed last Friday that repairing the leak is a process “Quite complicated”. This is because the spacecraft would have to return to the space company’s factory to be disassembled. The consequence? An even longer delay for a failure that is theoretically not worrying.

Despite this drawback, both the space agency and the manufacturer hope that the mission will be a success. Stich added that helium leaks are not uncommon in space flight. The NASA director recalled that the space shuttles suffered leaks of this type on some occasions and that he has seen some similar cases in the Crew Dragon capsules.

The first crewed Starliner flight will be a seven-day mission that will take NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to the ISS. The mission will serve test all systems of the spacecraft, a key stage before regular flights begin. If the takeoff is canceled due to weather reasons, NASA will be able to try again on June 2, 5 or 6.

Images | Boeing

In Xataka | For the first time since the 1970s, it is not clear that the United States is actually capable of sending astronauts to the Moon