That rocket was supposed to launch the new astronaut capsule to enter orbit around the Earth on Monday evening. It’s not yet clear how long it will take to resolve the issue, but the next available launch times for the mission are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday evening.
The manned mission should actually have been carried out in 2018, but due to design errors at Boeing, the test flight was delayed one after another. The first unmanned test flight, in December 2019, went wrong. The capsule should have turned towards the space station ISS, but the engine remained on. As a result, the vessel continued to climb and flew past its ‘turn’. There was probably an error in the software.
The second flight was supposed to be in March 2021, but was postponed more than five times. Just before the planned departure in August 2021, things went wrong again: the valves on the fuel tanks did not work and the launch was canceled. In May of the following year it still worked. The Starliner flew to the ISS, docked and landed safely on Earth after almost a week.
Last year, in preparation for the first manned flight, Boeing discovered problems with the parachutes, which are supposed to slow the craft before landing on Earth. That meant another postponement. The project is already costing hundreds of millions of dollars more than budgeted.
Tags: manned test flight Boeing spaceship postponed due technical problems
