“The first manned flight to the International Space Station (ISS), manufactured by Boeing, the Starliner spacecraft was canceled on Monday evening due to a failure in the launch vehicle,” it was reported at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Two astronauts NASAButch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were already strapped in inside the ship's capsule when the pre-start countdown was suddenly stopped. As engineer Dillon Rice of United Launch Alliance later reported, the cause was detection of a faulty oxygen valve in the upper stage of the Atlas launch vehicle.
No new start date has been announced.
Flight to the International Space Station canceled. This is not the first such case
This was another delay of the first crewed Starliner flight, which already took place has been on hold for several years due to technical faults. Rice said that because this will be the first manned flight, Boeing “doesn't want to make that decision.” no risk“.
The first Starliner launch in 2019, still without a crew, ended in failure because the capsule entered the wrong orbit and did not reach the ISS. The flight had to be repeated. A series of further technical faults were later discovered.
10 years ago, NASA commissioned private companies, Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX, to develop and produce vehicle for transporting astronauts to and from the ISS. Unlike Boeing, Dragon Space X ships successfully complete flights orbital from 2020.
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