The launch of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to take place on August 3, the aerospace agency NASA announced on Monday, August 2.
"The target time for the launch of the mission is August 3, Tuesday, 01: 20 Eastern American time (20: 20 Moscow time. - Ed), " the publication says .
On July 30, the Atlas 5 launch vehicle with the CST-100 Starliner was taken away from the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome in Florida due to adverse weather conditions.
Earlier, NASA reported that the second test flight in the unmanned mode of the Starliner spacecraft was postponed due to the incident on July 29 with the Russian Nauka module during docking with the station. The ministry indicated that the launch was postponed to give the ISS crew members time to check the operation of the newly arrived module, as well as to prepare for the arrival of the Starliner.
Meanwhile, a source in the space industry said that the launch of the Starliner to the ISS was postponed due to unavailability for launch, and not because of the incident with the Nauka module.
During the first test flight of the American ship on December 20, 2019, it failed to dock with the ISS.
After docking with the ISS on July 29, the Nauka module unplanned the engines, as a result, the station lost its orientation and changed its altitude. According to Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS), due to a short-term software failure, a direct command to turn on the module's engines was mistakenly implemented. The orientation of the ISS was aligned using the engines of the Progress spacecraft and the Zvezda module.