Washington. Shortly before the first manned test flight of the crisis-plagued spaceship “Starliner,” the planned launch on Tuesday night was canceled. The US space agency Nasa said an oxygen valve on the “Atlas V” rocket needed to be examined. The two NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams left the “Starliner” capsule and returned to their crew quarters at the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida. A new date for the test flight, which had previously been postponed several times, was not initially announced.
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NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams exit the operations and checkout building. Here the two astronauts still thought that everything was going according to plan.
Source: John Raoux/AP
The plan had actually been for Wilmore and Williams to set off with the “Starliner” on its first manned test flight to the International Space Station (ISS). They were supposed to arrive there on Wednesday and stay for around a week. For the arrival of the “Starliner”, the “Crew Dragon” that was docked there was moved to another docking station on the ISS.
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In May 2022, the “Starliner,” developed and built by US aircraft manufacturer Boeing, completed a successful unmanned flight to the ISS for the first time and spent four days there – an important test for the spacecraft.
In the future, it will transport astronauts to the ISS as an alternative to SpaceX’s “Crew Dragon” space capsule. However, due to a number of problems, the project is well behind schedule. SpaceX boss Elon Musk was able to comment on his Platform X Then don’t hold back: “Let us know if you want to borrow a rocket.”
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