Heavy Atlas 5 rocket with Starliner spacecraft without a crew on August 3 did not start from a cosmodrome on Cape Canaveral in Florida (USA) due to the detected technical malfunction, reports NASA in twitter.
“Our team has turned on the valves of the engine system of the service module [ship] and take a pause that allows you to collect data for the following steps” – says in the Boeing Corporation.
Commenting on this situation, the head of the press service of Roskosmos, Vladimir Ustimno, called the ugly earlier attempt to connect the launch of Starliner with the Russian multifunctional laboratory module (MLM) “Science”. “But that’s what it does not understand, so it’s attempts to NASA and Boeing in the presence of serious problems to accuse the Russian module” Science “in the exit. Despite the fact that there was bad weather on the cosmodrome, and the ship and rocket returned back to the vertical assembly shop, which would be Didn’t do if the transfer really happened because of the “science”. Unscrax it, “wrote Ustimenko in Telegram.
On August 4, Starliner was supposed to dock at the International Space Station (ISS), and on August 9 – to minimize and four hours to land on White-Sands Polygon (New Mexico).
In July, RIA Novosti, with reference to the US space agency, reported that NASA decided to transfer the Starliner test launch to the ISS due to the situation with “science”. In “Roskosmos” refused to consider the reason for the transfer of the launch of this spacecraft incident with MLM.
Previous times Starliner tried to fly away (also without a crew) to the ISS in December 2019. This attempt was unsuccessful. Because of the failure in software, Starliner did not reach the ISS, but managed to return to Earth successfully.
This reusable spacecraft is designed to deliver up to seven people to the ISS. At an near-earth orbit, a 13-ton Starliner is capable of 210 days, in an unmanned autonomous flight – about three days. The diameter of the spacecraft is 4.56 meters, the height is 5.03 meters, which exceeds the dimensions of the Apollo command module, which sent the first people to the moon. One capsule Starliner admits up to ten spaces to space. The landing of the spacecraft is carried out on land and assumes the use of a heat shield, a parachute system and airbag. The STARLINER head developer is Boeing.
Currently, people at the ISS are delivering Russian disposable space ships “Union of MS” and American reusable Crew Dragon.