The corporation postponed the launch indefinitely
NEW YORK, August 13. /TASS/. The Boeing Corporation has postponed indefinitely the launch of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). As the company explained on Friday, the decision was made in connection with the need to return the ship to the factory to fix problems in the operation of the engines.
"Today, Boeing informed [the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] (NASA) that the CST-100 Starliner will be disconnected from the Atlas V launch vehicle," the company said in a statement posted on its website. According to the document, the ship will be returned to the workshop to "identify malfunctions in the operation of engine valves."
"Moving the spacecraft to the training workshop will require Boeing, NASA and the United Launch Alliance [which developed the launch vehicle] to agree on a new launch date when the malfunction will be eliminated," the statement says.
On July 29, NASA announced the postponement of the Starliner launch scheduled for July 30 to the ISS. Then the transfer was associated with the unplanned activation of the engines of the Russian Nauka module after docking with the ISS. According to the new plans, the ship was supposed to launch on August 3, but a few hours before the launch, the company announced that they were considering postponing the launch to August 4. It was also not used due to the need to conduct additional checks on the readiness of the device.
The Starliner ship, developed by Boeing, has a mass of 13 tons and is designed for a crew of seven people and an autonomous flight lasting 60 hours. It was first launched on December 20, 2019 in unmanned mode to the ISS from the Cape Canaveral Air Base (Florida). The docking with the orbital complex was scheduled for December 22, but it was canceled due to technical problems. One of the reasons was called a failure in the flight time calculation system, as a result, the ship was returned to Earth.
