Boeing delays its first flight of the crew capsule flight in August: report

Boeing postponed the first space flight of his CST-100 Starliner crew capsule – an unprepared test mission at the International Space Station (ISS) – next month in August at the earliest, according to Reuters.

The target date of the first crewed flight of the ISS by Starliner was also pushed back, from August to November, Reuters reported Wednesday (March 20), citing anonymous industrial sources. One of these sources said that technical problems were not the only factor to take into account; Planning issues at the Starliner launch site, Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida, also contributed.

Boeing and NASA spokesmen declined to comment, but the NASA official said an updated launch schedule would be released next week, Reuters reported.

Boeing is growing Starliner The aerospace giant signed a $ 4.2 billion contract with NASA in 2014 to transport astronauts to the ISS.

Crew Dragon already has a spaceflight to his credit: Earlier this month, the SpaceX capsule took part in an unprepared six-day demonstration mission on the ISS, known as the Demo-1. SpaceX plans to conduct a flight test of the Crew Dragon emergency evacuation system in the near future; If all goes well with this unmounted launch, Crew Dragon could carry two NASA astronauts to the ISS during Demo-2 demo flight. from July.

Contracted operational missions with four astronauts will begin sometime later.

NASA has signed commercial crew contracts with Boeing and SpaceX to bring human orbital spaceflight back to US soil. The country has been deprived of this capacity since July 2011, when NASA withdrew its fleet of space shuttles after 30 years of service.

Since then, NASA has relied on Russian rockets and Soyuz spacecraft to route American astronauts to and from the ISS. A seat on the three-person Soyuz Space Shuttle currently costs about $ 80 million.

Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.