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"Starliner" in Cape Canaveral: parachutes cause trouble
Photo: Joel Kowsky / dpa
Another setback for the crisis-plagued Starliner spacecraft: Due to new technical problems, a first manned test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) has to be postponed, as the US space agency Nasa and the US aircraft manufacturer Boeing announced at a press conference on Thursday. There are problems with the parachute system and a tape on a cable connection device that turned out to be flammable. Whether the test flight could take place this year, the representatives of Nasa and Boeing did not want to say.
The "Starliner" was supposed to launch to the ISS on July 21 at the earliest with NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams on board and stay there for about a week. This date had also been postponed several times before.
In May 2022, the "Starliner" made its first successful unmanned flight to the ISS and spent four days there – an important test for the spacecraft. In the future, it will transport astronauts to the ISS as an alternative to SpaceX's "Crew Dragon" space capsule. However, due to a number of problems, the project is far behind schedule.
mik/dpa-AFX