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Published on: Amended:
Washington (AFP)
An unmanned test mission of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule, which is ultimately to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, has had to be postponed, NASA said on Monday.
The test, which had previously been postponed to early April, will suffer another delay, this time due to unprecedented cold temperatures in Texas that have caused major blackouts in the southern state of the United States.
“We lost time with the weather in Houston. We lost about a week of time,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program director, said at a press conference.
NASA “continues to assess options” for the new test date.
The Starliner’s first crewed flight is currently scheduled for September, Stich added.
During a first test flight in December 2019, the Starliner capsule failed to dock with the ISS and returned to Earth prematurely – a setback for aerospace giant Boeing.
Since then, its program has lagged far behind SpaceX, the other company – owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk – chosen by NASA to develop a ship to transport astronauts to the ISS.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule has already transported astronauts to the station in June and November 2020. Four other astronauts, including Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, will return to the ISS in April.
© 2021 AFP
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