CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., May 19 (Reuters) – Boeing’s new Starliner capsule was due to launch on Thursday on an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station, aiming to give the company much-needed success after two years costly technical delays and setbacks.

The gumball-shaped CST-100 Starliner was scheduled to lift off at 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carried atop an Atlas V rocket provided by the Boeing -Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA).

ULA said Wednesday night’s forecast called for a 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for an on-time launch.

If all goes as planned, the capsule will arrive at the space station about 24 hours later and dock with the orbiting research outpost about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth at 7:10 p.m. EDT friday.

The Boeing craft is to spend four to five days tethered to the space station before undocking and returning to Earth, with an airbag-cushioned parachute landing on the desert floor of White Sands, New Mexico.

A successful mission will bring the long-delayed Starliner one step closer to providing NASA with a reliable second means of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

Since the resumption of crewed flights in orbit from American soil in 2020, nine years after the end of the space shuttle program, the American space agency has had to rely solely on Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules piloted by the Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

PAYLOAD AND PASSENGER MODEL

The Starliner will not fly in empty orbit. The capsule will carry a research dummy to collect data on crew cabin conditions during the trip, as well as 500 pounds of cargo to be delivered to the space station crew – three NASA astronauts, one astronaut of the European Space Agency from Italy and three Russian cosmonauts.

Two of the American astronauts will be tasked with boarding the capsule during Starliner’s stay to take measurements of its interior environment and unload supplies.

Thursday’s launch marks a repeat of a 2019 test mission that failed to reach a successful rendezvous with the space station due to a flight software malfunction. Later problems with Starliner’s propulsion system, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, led Boeing to cancel an attempt to launch the capsule last summer.

The spacecraft remained on the ground for another nine months as the two companies argued over what caused its fuel valves to close and which company was responsible for fixing them, as Reuters reported last week. . Read more

Boeing says it has since resolved the problem with a temporary workaround and plans to redesign the propulsion system’s fuel valve system after this week’s flight.

The Starliner was developed under a $4.5 billion fixed-price contract with NASA to provide the US space agency with a second route to low Earth orbit, with SpaceX, and proved costly for Boeing. .

Delays and engineering setbacks with Starliner have led the aerospace giant to take $595 million in fees since the capsule failed in 2019, even as the company struggles to emerge from successive crises of its airliner business and its space defense unit.

If the second uncrewed orbit trip is successful, Starliner could fly its first team of astronauts in the fall, although NASA officials warn the deadline could be pushed back.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Mike Fincke had been assigned to fly Starliner’s first crewed mission. But NASA officials, reluctant to strap two astronauts to a flight with an uncertain launch date, said Wednesday the mission could end up carrying at least two of the four astronauts currently training to test the Starliner.

Reporting by Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Editing by Steve Gorman and Gerry Doyle

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