[…] After being scrubbed two hours prior to launch—with Wilmore and Williams already aboard the Starliner—on the evening of 6 May, following observations of a faulty oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V’s Dual-Engine Centaur (DEC) upper stage, the mission was realigned to fly as soon as 6:16 p.m. EDT on the 17th, before slipping again to No Earlier Than (NET) 4:43 p.m. EDT on the 21st, due to a helium leak in Starliner’s service module that was subsequently traced to a flange on a single reaction control thruster. When launch does occur, Wilmore and Williams will become the first humans to ride a member of the “Mighty Atlas” rocket family since Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper flew his day-long Faith 7 mission way back in May 1963. […]
from Comments for AmericaSpace https://ift.tt/qwAMNWK
via
World Space Info