Atlas 5

The Landsat 9 satellite is set for launch Sept. 27 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. These photos show the encapsulation of the environmental monitoring spacecraft inside the payload fairing of its Atlas 5 launcher.

The head of NASA’s space operations division said this week an unpiloted test flight of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule to the International Space Station, delayed from August by valve problems, will likely not launch until next year.

The next Landsat observatory has been mounted on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in California for liftoff Sept. 27, continuing an unbroken record of Earth observations to track urban sprawl, water usage, tropical deforestation, retreating glaciers, and more over the last half-century.

After valve problems caused it to miss an opportunity to launch earlier this month on a test flight to the International Space Station, Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule returned to a processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday after being removed from its Atlas 5 launcher at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Ground teams at Cape Canaveral wheeled Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule and a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket back inside their assembly hangar Thursday for further troubleshooting of misbehaving valves inside the Starliner propulsion system. Without a quick fix, technicians will have to remove the spacecraft from the Atlas 5 rocket for more extensive work, potentially delaying the Starliner test flight by months.