NASA in June awarded SpaceX a contract, worth up to $843 million, to design and build the U.S. deorbit vehicle (DV) that will drag the massive laboratory to its final resting place in a remote section of the ocean. No existing spacecraft has the capabilities required to complete the mission.

Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, Dana Weigel, manager of the space agency’s ISS program, and Sarah Walker, director of mission management for SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, provided more details on the tall task at hand for SpaceX and predicted what the space station’s final days might look like.

According to Weigel, the U.S. DV contract is different from previous SpaceX contract awards. These have typically been end-to-end, where SpaceX oversees everything from launch through operation. This time, the manufacturer will simply deliver the vehicle for NASA’s use. The contract also has a dwell in storage requirement, which calls for SpaceX to deliver the DV early enough for NASA to perform checkouts prior to launch.

NASA will also need to secure a launch provider for the spacecraft. Walker on Wednesday appeared to throw SpaceX’s hat in that ring as well, saying the company would welcome the opportunity if it arose. NASA uses the firm’s Falcon 9 rocket routinely and has plans to deploy its Falcon Heavy model in the future.

Before Wednesday, little was known about the design of the deorbit vehicle. Officials revealed that it will be a heavily modified version of the company’s Cargo Dragon model, which flies routine ISS resupply missions, but with a specially designed trunk containing propellant, avionics, and more. Walker referred to it as “basically another spacecraft” that will be twice as large as a typical Dragon trunk. The capsule will be pulled from the existing Dragon fleet, and the trunk will be attached.

Walker said the DV will require six times as much useful propellant and three to four times as much power generation and storage. It will also need enough propellant to fly to orbit and operate for several months before completing its mission. By Weigel’s estimate, the vehicle will have a wet mass north of 30,000 kilograms.

NASA was lured by SpaceX’s proposal in part because Dragon is flight-proven hardware—in other words, the agency is familiar with the spacecraft and its systems. Like Dragon, the DV will feature SpaceX Draco engines—46 of them, with 16 on the capsule and 30 in the trunk. About 25 of these will fire at once during the final ISS reentry burn.

In another similarity to Dragon, the vehicle will include both manual and automated functions. Weigel said NASA expects to lose communications during the final four days or so of the mission, during which time the DV will need to manage all onboard tasks.

All of these requirements have driven up the spacecraft’s price, with Bowersox estimating it to be around $750 million. He said that NASA must secure a total of $1.5 billion to cover the DV, launch vehicle, and mission operation, and has asked for $180 million in a supplemental budget request to Congress. If it cannot secure the necessary funding, the money will need to come from NASA’s budget, which Bowersox said could affect ISS operations.

Officials said that projects as complex as the deorbit vehicle concept typically spend five to eight years in development. Per Weigel, the plan is to deorbit the ISS in 2030 for a splashdown in 2031, which would require the DV to launch about one and a half years earlier.

Most of the orbital lab is expected to melt, burn up, or vaporize during its controlled reentry. Weigel said teams have yet to determine where the wreckage will land but that it will be in a remote section of the ocean—potentially the South Pacific—within a narrow area 2,000 kilometers long. She characterized the operation as common for a vehicle as large as the ISS.

The DV will launch and dock to the ISS before the space station uses onboard propulsion to lower its orbit, allowing it to drift closer to Earth. Roscosmos Progress spacecraft may also assist in the maneuver.

Crews will vacate the lab about six months before its retirement. As the ISS approaches an altitude of 250 kilometers, the DV will place it on the proper trajectory and initiate one final burn to bring it home. It will use a massive amount of thrust—enough to drag the massive satellite while resisting drag from atmospheric forces.

Though the DV is being specially designed to deorbit the ISS, Walker did not rule out the possibility that it could find new life with NASA through future applications.

“Anything’s possible,” she said.

As for the ISS, Bowersox said crews will salvage as much as they can, including scientific instruments and mementos such as ship’s logs, despite there being no dedicated recovery mission. The station’s remnants will be divided among the U.S., Canada, Japan, Russia, and the European Union, whose space agencies have continuously occupied it for nearly a quarter of a century. The five agencies share responsibility for safely deorbiting the ISS.

According to Bowersox, all five partners agreed on the U.S. DV concept as the right spacecraft for the mission. However, the mission has not yet received formal approval and could be modified based on feedback.

The hope, Bowersox and Weigel said, is that the ISS deorbit timeline aligns with the launch of a new generation of commercial space stations. NASA has awarded contracts to four firms—Blue Origin, Axiom Space, Northrop Grumman, and Starlab Space, a joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus—to develop ISS replacements that will be open to federal agencies and private companies alike. The officials said they envision NASA eventually becoming one of many customers in a commercial space ecosystem.

Bowersox predicted that a further extension of the space station’s lifespan is unlikely. In the event that it is retired before commercial alternatives come online, he said NASA will take “whatever steps we could to minimize the impact of that gap.”

In the meantime, the space agency is focused on getting as much as they can out of the space station’s remaining lifecycle, including research that will inform Artemis missions to the moon and beyond. If the deorbit mission goes smoothly, NASA activities shouldn’t miss a beat.

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The launch, occurring around 10:30 p.m. PDT at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, is a rare mishap for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which routinely flies NASA astronauts to orbit.

“The second-stage engine did not complete its second burn,” SpaceX said in a statement explaining the failure. “As a result, the Starlink satellites were deployed into a lower orbit than intended orbit. SpaceX has made contact with five of the satellites so far and is attempting to have them raise orbit using their ion thrusters.”

On X, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said his team was working on updating satellite software to run the ion thrusters at their equivalent of warp 9: “Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot.”

According to the company, SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are designed to burn up upon reentry into the atmosphere and do not pose any risk to people on the ground.

The Falcon 9 rocket is one of the most reliable in the world, with 69 launches this year and more than 350 since its debut in 2010, according to SpaceX.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

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The space agency on Thursday announced it awarded SpaceX a contract, worth up to $843 million, to build a vehicle that will deorbit the space station when it is retired in 2030. At the end of the laboratory’s lifespan, NASA will use the SpaceX-built vehicle to bring it crashing down into a remote section of the Pacific Ocean.

The Biden administration in 2021 committed to extend ISS operations through the end of the decade. After that, it is planned to be replaced by an array of NASA-funded commercial space stations.

“Selecting a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for the International Space Station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low Earth orbit at the end of station operations,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “This decision also supports NASA’s plans for future commercial destinations and allows for the continued use of space near Earth.”

Once the vehicle is developed, NASA will take over and oversee its operation. Like the ISS, it is expected to break up as it throttles toward the Earth. A launch service will be procured in the future—the agency currently uses SpaceX’s Falcon rocket to launch Commercial Crew rotation missions to the orbital laboratory.

Deorbiting the ISS will be the responsibility of the U.S., Canada, Japan, Russia, and member countries of the European Space Agency (ESA). Since 1998, the ESA, NASA, Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Russia’s Roscosmos have operated the space station, occupying it continuously for almost a quarter of a century.

In that time, it has been used to conduct microgravity experiments, test technologies that could be used to explore the moon and Mars, and, more recently, host commercial activities such as private astronaut missions.

According to an FAQ on NASA’s website, the agency expects itself to eventually become one of several customers, rather than a provider, of those services in a commercial space marketplace. As private companies take over low-Earth orbit operations, it will focus on flying humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

The first crewed lunar landing in the Artemis moon program, for example, is scheduled for September 2026. SpaceX is involved in that effort, too, developing the landing system that will put astronauts on the moon’s south pole.

NASA weighed several options for decommissioning the ISS, including a disassembly in space or boost to higher orbit, before settling on a controlled reentry. It will lower the station’s altitude using onboard propulsion before deploying SpaceX’s specially designed deorbit vehicle to bring it back into the atmosphere.

After lining up the debris footprint over an uninhabited area of the ocean, the space agency will give the all clear for one final burn. Most of the laboratory is expected to melt, burn up, or vaporize.

NASA in 2021 selected three private companies—Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, and Starlab Space, a joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus—to develop free-flying commercial alternatives to the space station. The firms were awarded space act agreements totaling $415 million.

Another private partner, Axiom Space, is designing four modules that will attach to the ISS and later jettison to form another commercial space lab. The company is in the design review phase and is on schedule to launch its first module in 2026 under a contract worth up to $140 million.

All four spacecraft are expected to be operational before the end of the decade to ensure a smooth transition away from ISS operations, but NASA will first need to certify them.

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Last week, Blue Origin filed a public comment to the FAA requesting that the regulator limit the number of launches of SpaceX’s Starship—the largest and most powerful rocket ever built—out of Launch Complex-39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which currently hosts the company’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

The FAA in May released a SpaceX proposal for high-frequency Starship operations at Kennedy, including the construction of infrastructure that would allow Musk’s firm to complete 44 launches per year.

The filing is the latest wrinkle in the multiyear feud between Musk and Bezos, who have exchanged taunts and legal actions as they battle for supremacy in the commercial spaceflight industry. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have obtained contracts from U.S. government agencies such as NASA and the Pentagon and intend to make cosmic tourism a piece of their business.

“Sue Origin,” Musk bantered on social media platform X, which he acquired in 2022.

In a subsequent post, the SpaceX boss added, “An obviously disingenuous response. Not cool of them to try (for the third time) to impede SpaceX’s progress by lawfare.”

The public comment filed by Blue Origin has no legal bearing, but the FAA will consider it as it determines what restrictions to place on Starship at Kennedy.

SpaceX is seeking a commercial launch vehicle operator license for Starship operations at Launch Complex 39-A, which will require the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS). The EIS describes the potential effects of those operations on the surrounding environment and was required for SpaceX to begin the Starship orbital test flight program, for example. SpaceX will prepare the assessment itself under FAA supervision.

During Starship’s maiden voyage, which ended in a ball of flames a few minutes into the mission, the impact from the launch caused unexpected damage as far as 6 miles away from the Starbase launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas. The force of Starship broke windows, sent ashy debris into the sky, and brought an FAA investigation into SpaceX’s environmental mitigations, grounding the rocket for months. Five environmental groups sued the FAA over its handling of the mission.

Since then, SpaceX has made several improvements to Starbase to contain Starship’s debris field, and subsequent missions have resulted in little fanfare. However, it appears Blue Origin will use the incident as leverage in its plea to the FAA.

“At Starbase, Starship and Super Heavy test missions have been subject to environmental scrutiny due to their impact on the local environment and community,” the public comment reads, citing the aforementioned lawsuit against the regulator as evidence.

Blue Origin too launches operations out of Kennedy. The company leases Space Launch Complex-36 and occupies several hangars, as well as a manufacturing site, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), which it says are close to the area SpaceX wants to use.

“Blue Origin employs over 2,700 full-time employees in [Florida’s] Brevard County, including 449 employees at CCSFS that are directly impacted by local launch activities,” the filing reads. “Blue Origin has invested more than $1 billion in capital expenditures to develop [Launch Complex-36] as the first privately built heavy-lift launch complex in the world.”

The company said it worries about the safety of property and personnel during a Starship launch anomaly, such as an explosion, fire, debris, or loud noise. It also argued that Starship operations could impede Blue Origin’s access to shared infrastructure and “limited airspace and maritime resources.”

Starship and the Super Heavy booster hold about 5,200 metric tons of liquid methane for propulsion—the force of which, Blue Origin claims, would impede company and government activities at Kennedy due to the anticipated requirement of a safety margin around the site.

The firm urged the FAA to place a cap on the number of Starship launches, specify and limit launch times, and invest in infrastructure that would make Kennedy and CCSFS safer and more accessible for other launch providers.

It also suggested that SpaceX and the government be required to compensate Blue Origin or other companies whose commercial activities are impacted by Starship, as well as mandatory penalties for SpaceX should it violate the EIS or its license.

Given Bezos’ history with Musk, it’s difficult to say whether genuine concern, a desire to hamper the competition, or both prompted the comment.

Blue Origin is developing an alternative to Starship, New Glenn, but the rocket has faced delays and has yet to fly. New Glenn has collected a handful of customers, including Amazon’s Project Kuiper and NASA, which intends to launch it to Mars on its maiden voyage later this year.

NASA was at the center of the most publicized dispute between Blue Origin and SpaceX. After the space agency tapped SpaceX as the sole provider of a human landing system (HLS) for Artemis missions to the moon, Bezos in 2021 took NASA to court, arguing that it had promised two contracts.

The company would ultimately lose that battle. But the space agency in 2023 announced Blue Origin as the second Artemis HLS provider. Both companies are now working with NASA to develop a revamped plan for the Mars Sample Return Program, each receiving a $1.5 million contract.

The firms are also competing in the military sphere. In 2022, Blue Origin lost out on a pair of Pentagon contracts at the expense of SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But earlier this month, it secured its own agreement with the U.S. Space Force for 30 military launches, worth up to $5.6 billion.

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Starship and the Super Heavy booster finally made it back to Earth following the spacecraft’s fourth integrated flight test (IFT-4), which was the main goal of the mission that launched from Boca Chica, Texas. As SpaceX put it, “the payload for this test was the data.”

Super Heavy splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico after jettisoning from Starship about four minutes into the flight. Starship, meanwhile, flew nearly halfway around the world over the course of about 40 minutes before splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

External cameras and on board Starlink satellites gave viewers a rare live look at Starship’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere from its suborbital flight path. The video feed appeared to show the loss of several heat shield tiles and damage to one of the flaps—which control the vehicle as it decelerates from hypersonic speeds—as plasma built up around the spacecraft.

Live footage cut in and out several times, prompting cheers from the SpaceX team each time the feed was restored. Crews toasted marshmallows in celebration of Starship’s inaugural landing burn, which slowed it down for a “soft” ocean landing. Then, finally, after much anticipation, the gargantuan spacecraft splashed down for the first time at T-plus 1 hour and 6 minutes.

“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in a post on X, the social media platform he acquired in 2022. “Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic achievement!!”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who is betting on Starship to complete the necessary test flights in time for SpaceX to prepare a Starship Human Landing System (HLS) for the Artemis III mission—NASA’s first lunar landing attempt since the Apollo missions—also sang the praises of IFT-4.

After successfully making it to suborbit and back, the arrow is pointing up for Starship.

Each of the spacecraft’s first two integrated test flights ended in explosions, and its third was cut short just after reentering the atmosphere. All three attempts resulted in the spacecraft’s grounding by the FAA.

But SpaceX painted these as successes. According to the company, Starship’s development falls under its philosophy of rapid design iteration. Essentially, the firm is okay with blowing up a few rockets if it can collect data that helps it hone the design, increasing the chances of success on future launches.

A reentry and soft landing was the primary objective of Thursday’s flight test, validating that Starship and Super Heavy—which are designed to be reusable—could survive the extreme conditions during approach and landing.

At present, it’s unclear whether the extent of the damage will prevent the rocket from flying again. But with both stages back on Earth, it seems unlikely that the FAA would move to ground Starship for a fourth time.

“The fourth flight of Starship made major strides to bring us closer to a rapidly reusable future,” SpaceX said in an update on its website. “Its accomplishments will provide data to drive improvements as we continue rapidly developing Starship into a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon, Mars, and beyond.”

That would mean Musk and SpaceX can turn to the next step in Artemis preparations: an in-orbit propellant transfer demonstration. Following that, Starship will need to complete an uncrewed lunar landing, which could require multiple launches.

The final phase will be a crewed flight test, in which the spacecraft will land billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman on the moon. Isaacman is the driving force behind the Polaris Program, which in 2022 purchased three flights from SpaceX in an effort to advance human spaceflight. The program’s first mission, Polaris Dawn, is expected to launch this summer on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. It will culminate in the crewed flight of Starship.

It’s difficult to gauge exactly how many Starship launches SpaceX will need to complete before the rocket is certified for routine missions. But the company is under a time crunch.

Already, Artemis III has been pushed back from 2025 to September 2026. And NASA, facing competition from Russia, China, and others to expand the envelope for human spaceflight, will likely want to stick to that timeline.

If that’s the case, SpaceX will need to see continued positive results from rapid design interaction. The good news is that Starship appears to be on the right trajectory.

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The mission, which has faced a series of setbacks since an initial launch attempt was scrubbed on May 6, is now targeted for 10:52 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, with a backup launch window available Thursday.

The Starliner CFT is intended to be the spacecraft’s final test flight before NASA moves to certify it for service missions to the ISS, the first of which could take place next year. To date, all eight Commercial Crew rotation missions to the orbital laboratory have been flown by SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. 

The company signed its own multibillion-dollar contract with the space agency at the same time as Boeing but has already cemented itself as an invaluable partner. The same cannot be said for the aerospace giant, which has flown Starliner to the ISS just once.

CFT launch attempts have been delayed or scrubbed due to a litany of issues. First, it was a faulty pressure regulation valve on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V launch vehicle, which will carry Starliner into orbit. Then, crews discovered a small helium leak on Starliner itself, involving one of the 28 reaction control system thrusters on its service module. These small engines use helium to make minor maneuvers and keep Starliner in orbit.

NASA and Boeing have since described the leak as stable but have opted not to repair it, which would require Starliner to be unstacked from Atlas V and could take months. However, in investigating the root cause of the leak, crews discovered what the space agency described as a “design vulnerability” in the capsule’s propulsion system.

In a scenario NASA estimates has a likelihood of about 0.77 percent, the original leak could combine with an adjacent leak to prevent Starliner from performing a deorbit burn. That’s the maneuver that returns a spacecraft to Earth’s atmosphere following its mission.

All of this work identifying and assessing risk pushed the CFT back to Saturday. But yet another problem forced a cancellation of the launch just a few minutes before takeoff—and made a second go-around on Sunday infeasible.

According to the Starliner team, the issue is again on ULA’s side of things.

During the countdown, ground support equipment on the pad at Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida experienced issues, which crews traced to a power supply unit on one of three chassis on Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage. The power supply unit indirectly powers Centaur’s topping valves during the launch sequence, and all three chassis must be running in order for the countdown to be completed.

According to Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, the chassis with the faulty power unit was quickly replaced. The new equipment has been retested and was functioning normally as of Sunday. NASA and Boeing added that they did not observe any physical damage to Starliner or Atlas V, and crews will perform a “full failure analysis” to determine what went wrong.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, Starliner’s first human passengers, remain in quarantine at Kennedy Space Center. If all goes according to plan, Wilmore and Williams will dock with the ISS later this week. There, they will spend about one week performing tests of Starliner’s systems as NASA prepares for the program’s next step: certification.

After that, Starliner would begin alternating six-month Commercial Crew rotation missions with SpaceX’s Dragon.

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NASA and Boeing on Wednesday announced that the Starliner Crewed Flight Test (CFT), intended to be the spacecraft’s final dress rehearsal before the agency certifies it for service missions, is a “go” to proceed for 12:25 p.m. EDT on Saturday, June 1.

However, Starliner engineers during a press conference last week said that a design flaw with the spacecraft’s propulsion system gives the capsule a 0.77 percent chance of being unable to perform a deorbit burn after it returns from the ISS. A deorbit burn, in which the vehicle reverses direction and fires its orbital maneuvering engines to slow itself, is used to maneuver a spacecraft back into Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA, Boeing, and launch provider United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, are taking a calculated risk with the launch attempt following years of delays to the Starliner program. The setbacks have resulted from a combination of issues involving the spacecraft’s software, propulsion system, and parachutes.

Boeing and rival SpaceX each have multibillion-dollar contracts with the space agency to provide crew rotation services. But all eight missions to the ISS to date have been flown using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which like Starliner is a reusable capsule designed to accommodate up to seven passengers.

Starliner in 2019 and 2022 attempted two uncrewed test flights to the ISS, the first aborted and the second successful.

The capsule’s first crewed mission has been delayed a number of times since an initial launch attempt scheduled for May 6 was scrubbed due to an issue with ULA’s Atlas V launch vehicle. Following that setback, engineers discovered a small helium leak on the Starliner capsule itself, tracing it to one of 28 reaction control system thrusters on the spacecraft’s service module.

“This is a high-pressure system, and helium is a very small, tiny molecule, and it tends to leak,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, last week. “This particular leak, I don’t think it implicates the design of the seal or the flange. It’s just maybe a defective part.”

Rather than replace the faulty valve, which would involve removing Starliner from the Atlas V rocket and could take several months, crews decided to try and better understand the flaw.

According to Stich, Starliner could actually weather a complete rupture in the valve’s seal, even if additional helium leaks spring up elsewhere.

“We could handle this particular leak if that leak rate were to grow even up to 100 times,” he said.

The leak is now described as stable, and Stich noted that SpaceX’s Dragon has also encountered leaks, which did not impact operations. But in the course of investigating the issue, teams uncovered yet another problem.

“We found a design vulnerability…in the [propulsion] system as we analyzed this particular helium leak, where for certain failure cases that are very remote, we didn’t have the capability to execute the deorbit burn with redundancy,” said Stich.

In what Stich described as “a pretty diabolical case where you would lose two helium manifolds in two separate doghouses, and then they have to be next to each other”—referring to the aforementioned 0.77 percent figure—Starliner could be unable to perform a deorbit burn. Engineers said they have come up with a contingency plan that has already been tested by NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore in a Starliner simulator.

“We have multiple redundancies in our system,” Mark Nappi, vice president of Boeing and program manager for Starliner, said last week. “We have a case here that’s extremely remote that we missed. And if there are more out there, they’re going to be in that same category of extremely remote.”

Though the issue hasn’t entirely gone away, Starliner teams appear committed to a launch on Saturday.

NASA, Boeing, and ULA on Wednesday completed a Delta-Agency Flight Test Readiness Review, determining that all Starliner systems, facilities, and teams are ready for launch. On Thursday, crews rolled Atlas V and Starliner back to the pad at Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, further signaling their intent to move forward with the attempt.

NASA will provide live coverage of the mission on its website, app, and YouTube channel. If all goes according to plan, Starliner, carrying Wilmore and Williams, will dock to the ISS’s Harmony module Sunday afternoon. The astronauts would then spend about one week on the orbital laboratory, where they will test the capsule’s systems in order to advance the certification process.

NASA hopes to get Starliner into its Commercial Crew rotation with the Starliner-1 service mission, scheduled for no earlier than 2025. After that, it would alternate six-month missions to the ISS with SpaceX’s Dragon.

U.S. Space Force meteorologists on Friday said there is a 90 percent chance that weather conditions will meet the criteria for a safe launch. Should the attempt be scrubbed again, backup launch windows are scheduled for Sunday, June 2, Wednesday, June 5, and Thursday, June 6.

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After postponing the previously announced May 25 launch attempt of the Starliner CFT on Tuesday, NASA on Wednesday said that it, Boeing, and launch provider United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, are targeting no earlier than Saturday, June 1, at 12:25 p.m. EDT for the next attempt. Additional launch windows include Sunday, June 2, Wednesday, June 5, and Thursday, June 6.

The postponement is the latest in a string of delays that have impacted the mission—and plagued the Starliner program more broadly—for years. An initial launch attempt was scrubbed hours before takeoff on May 6.

The setback follows the discovery of what NASA and Boeing described as a small helium leak on Starliner’s service module, which is designed to power and maneuver the autonomous spacecraft on its journey to the ISS.

According to NASA, Starliner teams have been meeting extensively to identify a new launch date, but further work remains. The agency said the current leak remains stable but that crews are now conducting follow-on performance and propulsion system assessments “to understand potential helium system impacts on some Starliner return scenarios.”

NASA will also perform a Flight Test Readiness Review to recap the work that has been done since May 6 and explain the rationale for attempting the next launch. A date for that review has not been identified but will be announced once selected, it said.

“It has been important that we take our time to understand all the complexities of each issue, including the redundant capabilities of the Starliner propulsion system and any implications to our Interim Human Rating Certification,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. “We will launch [astronauts] Butch [Wilmore] and Suni [Williams] on this test mission after the entire community has reviewed the teams’ progress and flight rationale at the upcoming Delta Agency Flight Test Readiness Review.”

NASA views Starliner as an alternative to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for missions to low-Earth orbit. Dragon has flown each of the space agency’s eight Commercial Crew rotation missions, ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS, and will facilitate the upcoming Crew-9 mission scheduled for August.

But NASA wants to keep two reusable spacecraft in its fleet in case of a contingency, such as the incident that stranded astronaut Frank Rubio on the orbital laboratory for six months.

Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 each signed multibillion-dollar contracts with the agency to secure test flights and several Commercial Crew missions for their respective vessels. SpaceX has since expanded its arrangement multiple times, while Starliner—which is under contract for six flights—has languished in the development phase.

The Starliner CFT is intended to be the spacecraft’s final test flight before NASA certifies it for Commercial Crew rotation flights. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft’s first commercial mission to the ISS, Starliner-1, could take place next year. But the delays continue to pile up.

The mission was initially scrubbed due to an oscillating pressure regulation valve on ULA’s Atlas V rocket, which will send Starliner into orbit. The partners set a new target launch date of May 10, later revising it to May 17 to give crews additional time to resolve the issue.

Then, last week, teams discovered a new problem—this time involving a helium leak on one of the Starliner capsule’s 28 reaction control system thrusters. Helium allows the thrusters to fire and make minor maneuvers in orbit. As a result, the launch was pushed to no earlier than Tuesday, a timeline that was then revised yet again to Saturday.

With Wednesday’s announcement, the partners are now nearly one month behind schedule, placing the Starliner team in a bind. On one hand, the safety of the astronauts must be prioritized. But on the other, there is some pressure to launch sooner rather than later.

As Ars Technica’s Stephen Clark notes, the ISS docking schedule gets a bit crowded after July, so there is some pressure for Starliner teams to launch sooner rather than later. In addition, Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida—from where Starliner will launch—is used by ULA for other Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur launches.

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The approximately weeklong mission—which will take NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS and back—is intended to be Starliner’s final test flight before NASA certifies it for Commercial Crew rotation missions to the orbital laboratory. It would be the first crewed launch on ULA’s Atlas V rocket, which will send the spacecraft into orbit, and the first on the Atlas family of rockets in more than half a century.

An initial Starliner CFT launch attempt, scheduled for May 6, was scrubbed hours before takeoff due to an oscillating pressure regulation valve on the Atlas V’s upper stage. Boeing and NASA then pushed back the mission to May 10, later revising their timeline to Friday after successfully replacing the faulty valve.

Now, a new issue—involving the Starship capsule itself, rather than Atlas V—is holding up things.

NASA and Boeing on Tuesday said Starliner crews discovered a small helium leak on the spacecraft’s service module “traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster.”

The service module, which unlike Starliner’s crew module is expendable, is designed to power and maneuver the autonomous spacecraft. It is equipped with 28 reaction control system engines, designed by Boeing supplier Aerojet Rocketdyne, that generate 100 pounds of thrust each and stabilize the capsule in orbit. Helium allows the thrusters to fire and is neither toxic nor combustible.

Starliner teams are working to address the issue and conduct additional testing, resulting in the new target launch date of Tuesday.

“As a part of the testing, Boeing will bring the propulsion system up to flight pressurization just as it does prior to launch, and then allow the helium system to vent naturally to validate existing data and strengthen flight rationale,” the company said.

Boeing and NASA added that no further issues have arisen since the scrubbed launch on May 6.

Starliner successfully reached the ISS for the first and only time during an uncrewed test flight in 2022. But since Boeing unveiled the concept for the spacecraft in 2010, the program has been bogged down by delays. The CFT has been no exception.

NASA intends for Starliner to serve as a redundant alternative to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule—which, like Starliner, was designed to ferry astronauts to low-Earth orbit destinations—in the case of a contingency, such as the one that stranded astronaut Frank Rubio in space for six months (and helped Rubio achieve a U.S. spaceflight record in the process). Crew Dragon has flown all eight Commercial Crew missions to date under a contract with the space agency agreed upon in 2014, which has since been extended.

NASA and Boeing have a similar contract, worth $4.2 billion, for six missions, the first of which could fly early next year if all goes according to plan Tuesday.

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The company’s massive rocket and Super Heavy booster, which when stacked together stand nearly 400 feet tall, have been grounded since March as the FAA conducts a mishap investigation into Starship’s third uncrewed orbital test flight.

However, Musk on Saturday posted an image to social media platform X—which he acquired in October 2022—of Starship and Super Heavy being moved back to the company’s Starbase launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, which hosted the rocket’s first three test flights.

In response to a query about the date of the fourth flight, called Integrated Flight Test 4 or IFT-4, Musk gave a timeline of three to five weeks. That would place the next launch sometime in June.

SpaceX has a hit-or-miss track record when it comes to predicting Starship launches. Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s chief operating officer, said in March for example that IFT-4 could launch as soon as early May.

During the lead-up to Starship’s second test flight, which ultimately launched in November, Musk gave a timeline of six to eight weeks in April and again in June. In September, he said the rocket was “ready to launch” and was swiftly rebuffed by the FAA. However, on November 3, SpaceX correctly predicted that Starship would launch again by the middle of the month.

Starship’s three test flights have improved on each attempt but resulted in groundings of varying lengths by the FAA. The agency’s initial investigation spanned from April to November. The second took half as long, wrapping up between November and February.

Given the improvements made to Starship and Starbase before the rocket’s second flight test—such as the installation of a water-cooled steel plate beneath the launch pad to contain debris—and the relative success of its third flight test, SpaceX could be looking at a similar timeline of around three months for the current investigation. That would put it in line to close in June, making Musk’s prediction appear feasible.

Musk and SpaceX have already set ambitious goals for Starship’s fourth flight. The biggest will be to survive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, which is where the previous mission failed. Both Starship and the Super Heavy booster are designed to be reusable.

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