Tuesday, August 03, 2021
New space travel setback
Boeing has to postpone flight to the ISS
With the unmanned test flight, Boeing actually wants to get its space program back on track. But the development of his “Starliner” space capsule has suffered a new setback: a supply flight to the ISS planned for today has been canceled.
The US aviation giant Boeing has postponed the unmanned test flight of its “Starliner” capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) a few hours before the planned take-off. “We confirm that today’s test has been canceled,” said Boeing Space on Twitter. More details would follow. The spacecraft was supposed to be launched in the afternoon with an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida.
However, due to the weather, the chances of a start in the morning were only given as 50 percent. The company named thick clouds or possible lightning as problems. With the unmanned test flight, Boeing wants to get its space program back on track after several setbacks. A first unmanned test flight of the “Starliner” capsule failed in 2019 due to software problems. The spaceship could not approach the ISS at that time and returned to Earth prematurely.
The new “Starliner” test flight was originally planned for last Friday. After an incident when docking the new Russian laboratory module “Nauka” with the ISS, the launch was postponed. There are 180 kilograms of cargo on board the “Starliner”, among other things to supply the current ISS crew. The capsule is expected to return to earth with around 250 kilograms of cargo, including air tanks.
The US space agency Nasa had suspended its shuttle program ten years ago due to high costs and after two accidents and was subsequently dependent on Russian missiles to get to the ISS. In order to regain independence from Russia, the US government under the then President Barack Obama commissioned Tesla founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the aviation giant Boeing to build space shuttles. In the competition, SpaceX is clearly one step ahead: unlike Boeing, the company has already brought astronauts to the ISS.
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