CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – The first manned flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule will take place no earlier than Friday, NASA said, after a planned Monday evening launch was canceled following a malfunction on a valve of the Atlas V rocket which should propel the capsule into orbit.
A team from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin and manufacturer of Atlas V, worked through the night to test the valve and assess the severity of the situation.
This maiden voyage, which will carry two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), has been repeatedly delayed as Boeing seeks to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for a larger share of NASA’s lucrative market.
Boeing is also in the midst of a crisis after several in-flight incidents on 737 MAX planes. Getting the Starliner to this point has been a delicate process, marked by years of development failures and more than $1.5 billion in spending under a $4.2 billion contract with the NASA.
Depending on the results of upcoming tests, Starliner is expected to carry out at least six more manned missions to the space station for NASA.
(Reporting Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; French version Mathias de Rozario, editing by Kate Entringer)
©2024 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.