According to last year's plans, Boeing, under the NASA program, was supposed to conduct a test unmanned launch of the Starliner CST-2019 manned vehicle to the International Space Station in April 100. This device, like SpaceX's rival Crew Dragon, is designed to return the launch of astronauts to the ISS from American soil, and not from Russian spaceports. A test flight of Crew Dragon without people was successfully completed not so long ago. The test launch of Starliner Boeing has again been postponed to a later date.
According to NASA, the Starliner program cannot be completed in April and May due to "inappropriate" launch conditions. Obviously, nothing was known about this before. In June, the launch of Starliner will be hampered by the previously planned launch of a rocket into space to service the order of the US Air Force. August remains, but the agency and Boeing are not ready to name the exact date. It will be announced later. Accordingly, the first start of the Starliner mission with the crew on board is being postponed. The date of departure of the crew to the ISS on the Boeing spacecraft has shifted from August 2019 to the end of the year.
But there is no evil without good. Postponed to the end of the year, the departure of the crew on the Boeing vehicle will be accompanied by an expanded research program for both the Starliner CST-100 docked to the station itself and other experiments, including the work of people on the ISS with almost the maximum staffing. Also, the delayed launch will help once again to ensure the reliability of the equipment and the crewβs emergency rescue system in case of emergency situations.
In the same press release, NASA announced that within the next two weeks, the date of sending the SpaceX Crew Dragon to the ISS with the crew on board will be set. The unmanned Crew Dragon mission was successful and SpaceX is now preparing for additional tests of the crew emergency rescue system. Everything will be tested for the Crew Dragon manned flight.
Source: 3dnews.ru