The launch of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) has been postponed. This was reported on Tuesday, August 3, in the American company Boeing.
"We confirm that today's test launch of the Starliner ship has been canceled," the company said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Boeing noted that it will soon publish details.
On the eve of the aerospace agency NASA reported that the launch was to take place on August 3 at 01: 20 Eastern American time (20:20 Moscow time. - Ed.).
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.
Before that, on July 29, NASA noted that the second test flight in the unmanned mode of the Starliner spacecraft was postponed due to an incident 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.