Developed by Boeing on behalf of the US space agency Nasa StarlinerThe spacecraft made its first successful test flight to the International Space Station. After around four days at the ISS, the unmanned spacecraft undocked from the space station as planned on Wednesday and landed a few hours later in the US state of New Mexico, as Boeing and Nasa announced.
It was an important test for the crisis-ridden man Starliner. The spaceship is to transport astronauts to the ISS in the future – as an alternative to the Crew Dragon– Space capsule from SpaceX. However, the project is well behind schedule due to a number of issues. Actually he would have Starliner should have been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS for a long time, but during a first test in December 2019 the spacecraft did not make it to the ISS – partly because of a problem with the automatic ignition of the drives. In the past year, the tests were postponed several times, then the Starliner finally because of valve problems completely back to the workshop.
NASA had described the successful launch from the Cape Canaveral spaceport as a “milestone” last week. The spacecraft carried over 300 kilograms of cargo, including supplies for the crew of the ISS. Of the Starliner is a partially reusable spacecraft consisting of a crew capsule and a rocket-launched service module. Once approved for human transport, it can carry up to four crew members to the ISS.