Ready, Set, Don’t Go: Sunita Williams’ 3rd Space Mission Called Off Hours Before Lift-Off

Photo courtest: NASA

New Delhi: The first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spaceship, which was set to take Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams to space for a third time, was postponed only two hours before launch due to a technical glitch.

US space agency NASA announced that there was an off-nominal condition on an oxygen relief valve, which led to the postponement. No new date has been announced for the launch.

According to sources, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were strapped into their seats preparing for lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center when the call for a “scrub” came, because engineers noticed audible buzzing from a liquid oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket meant to propel the capsule into orbit.

Williams has already spent 322 days in space and held a record for the maximum hours of spacewalk by a woman, before being overtaken by Peggy Whitson.

She would have made history as the first woman to fly on a maiden crewed mission of a new space shuttle had the flight taken off.