The titanium valve ignited, leading to the blast.
The check valves will be replaced with more
reliable disks, according to Koenigsmann.
The valve failure was “something that we didn’t
expect and a great lesson for us,” he said. “My
emphasis is really on making sure this is safe.”
Koenigsmann said the repairs to other capsules
can be carried out alongside other work. But
while it’s not impossible, “it’s getting increasingly
difficult” to fly astronauts on the capsule by
year’s end, he told reporters. He declined to give
a tentative launch date for the test flight with
astronauts, adding that more issues could crop
up in the coming months.
Kathy Lueders, NASA’s commercial crew
program manager, also was reluctant to discuss
potential launch dates for SpaceX — or even
Boeing. The companies had been shooting to
launch astronauts to the space station by the
end of the year.
Boeing has yet to conduct a test spaceflight of its
Starliner capsule without anyone on board; late
summer is a possibility.
“I hope it’s this year” that astronaut flights resume
from Cape Canaveral, Lueders said. “But we’re
going to fly when it’s the right time and when we
know that we’ll be flying our crews safely.”
NASA astronauts have not launched from the U.S.
since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
Instead, NASA has been paying tens of millions of
dollars per seat on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, to
get astronauts to and from the space station.
SpaceX, meanwhile, has been launching space
station supplies for NASA since 2012. The next
liftoff is Sunday evening.