NASA delays Boeing spacecraft launch after Russian space station incident

A major incident on the International Space Station forced NASA and Boeing to delay the planned flight of the company’s spacecraft.

Boeing was scheduled to launch its spacecraft, called the Starliner, to the ISS on Friday afternoon and dock there on Saturday. This mission is supposed to be Starliner’s last test flight before transporting its first astronauts. Boeing has already attempted this demonstration flight once, in December 2019, but failed to reach the ISS due to software issues. Now the company is trying again, hoping to prove to NASA that Starliner is ready to fly astronauts.

But Boeing will have to wait a little longer.

Indeed, Russia added a new module to the ISS on Thursday, then immediately encountered major technical problems. The new module, called Nauka, unexpectedly began firing its thrusters just hours after arriving at the ISS, which moved the entire station out of position.

NASA via Youtube

NASA announced Thursday afternoon that it has decided to delay the launch of the Boeing Starliner. The next launch opportunity is Tuesday August 3.

“We wanted to make sure that we had some leeway to fully assess the situation on the station before adding another vehicle,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Spaceflight Directorate, said Thursday when of a press briefing.

Boeing is one of two companies – SpaceX is the other – that NASA has funded to develop manned space flight systems. NASA and Boeing are determined to complete the Starliner test flights and begin using the spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the ISS.

Before SpaceX’s Crew Dragon completed its test flights last year, NASA could only use the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to pilot its astronauts. Starliner’s next flight is essential to give the agency more options.

Nauka encountered technical problems on the ground and in space

Sergey Karpukhin / TASS / Getty Images

Russia originally planned to add Nauka to the ISS in 2007, but technical issues have delayed its development on the ground. Nauka finally launched on July 21, but immediately encountered technical issues. It didn’t complete the first engine burn that was supposed to push it into a higher orbit above Earth, so Russian flight controllers had to initiate several smaller burns to push it back on track.

The long-awaited science module finally docked at the ISS on Thursday at 9:29 a.m. ET. It locked to the correct ISS port and sealed itself. Cosmonauts began to prepare to open the hatch connecting the module to the station.

But three hours later, at around 12:34 p.m. ET, Nauka suddenly started firing his engines. It took the flight controllers about an hour to regain control of the ISS, after playing “tug of war” by pulling motors at another part of the station.

The thrusters rotated the ISS 45 degrees before NASA and Russian flight controllers regained control.

“It’s safe to say the rest of the day won’t go as planned, of course,” a flight controller told the ISS astronauts.

NASA says the astronauts on the ISS have never been in danger.

Currently, there are two cosmonauts, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrovnik, and five astronauts on board the station: Akihiko Hoshide from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency and Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and NASA’s Mark Vande Hei.

Aylin Woodward contributed reporting.