In fact, astronauts were supposed to be transported to the International Space Station on a Boeing Starliner long ago. But the project suffers from crises. Now another start had to be aborted.
The first manned test flight of the crisis-plagued Starliner spacecraft has been canceled again shortly before take-off. About three minutes before the space capsule was scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Spaceport in the US state of Florida, there was a temporary pause at first, and then the start was completely canceled by the US space agency NASA.
The reasons for this were initially unclear. The space agency said there was likely an error in the computer system on Earth.
“Starliner” is an alternative to the “Dragon” capsule.
The test flight was canceled shortly before takeoff about a month ago and has been repeatedly postponed since then. NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sonny Williams were actually supposed to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Starliner ship and stay there for about a week. According to NASA, there will be more launch options on Sunday, June 5th and 6th. It was not initially clear whether it would be possible to use one.
NASA plans to regularly use Starliner alongside SpaceX's Dragon capsule to transport astronauts to the space station. Billionaire Elon Musk's Dragon capsule has been transporting astronauts to the International Space Station on behalf of NASA for several years. But the Starliner program has suffered a number of setbacks in recent years.
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