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Washington Washington (AFP)
An unmanned test mission of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule, which is eventually to take astronauts to the International Space Station, had to be postponed, NASA said Monday.
The test, which was previously postponed to early April, will have to endure another delay, this time due to unprecedented cold temperatures in Texas, the southern U.S. Due to widespread power outages in the state.
“We lost time with the weather in Houston. We lost about a week,” Steve Steich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said during a press conference.
NASA is “continuing to evaluate options” for the new test date.
Steele added that Starliner’s first crew flight is currently scheduled for September.
During an initial test flight in December 2019, the Starliner capsule failed to dock on the ISS and returned to Earth prematurely – a shock for the aerospace giant Boeing.
Since then, its program has lagged far behind SpaceX, another company owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk – selected by NASA to develop a spacecraft to transport astronauts to the ISS.
The SpaceX crew took the Dragon Capsule astronauts to the station in June and November 2020. Four other astronauts, including Frenchman Thomas Pasquet, will return to the ISS in April.
21 2021 AFP
