The U.S. space agency NASA will try again Wednesday to launch two astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the new Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
Two previous attempts to send U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the ISS on the first crewed flight of Starliner were canceled before launch. Wilmore and Williams had just entered the capsule on May 6 when ground officials noted a faulty oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket’s second stage.
The second scrub occurred last Saturday with just under four minutes before liftoff due to a failure involving the computer system that controls the countdown’s final minutes.
If Wednesday’s launch is successful, Wilmore and Williams will spend a day in orbit before rendezvousing and docking with the orbital outpost, where they will spend about a week testing the capsule and its subsystems.
The eventual flight will be the final test before NASA can certify Boeing to conduct routine missions to and from the space station for the agency.
If the Boeing test is successful, it will become the second reliable option for human space flight along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon capsule. SpaceX has been shuttling NASA astronauts to and from the ISS since 2020.
The Starliner program has experienced years of costly setbacks and delays.
During a 2019 uncrewed test flight, the capsule was on an incorrect trajectory due to a software error and returned without reaching the ISS.
Another launch was postponed in 2021 because of a valve problem. An uncrewed capsule reached the ISS in May 2022. But the spacecraft has experienced several problems since then, including the discovery of flammable tape in the cabin and weak parachutes.
