NASA and Boeing announced at the end of last week that the launch of the first manned Starliner spacecraft will be further delayed.
The plan was to launch Boeing’s spacecraft, designed to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), on July 21. However, that will not be the case now.
The reason for once again moving the Starliner launch date is due to the discovery of two new safety flaws in the spacecraft. It has been found that the load-bearing capacity of the three parachutes on the Starliner is insufficient in the event that one of the parachutes fails to function properly. They have also discovered that dozens of meters of tape used as protection inside the spacecraft are flammable, which may require additional tape to cover the flammable tape.
In other words, Boeing seems to have a lot of issues to address before they can successfully fly astronauts to the ISS for the first time.
There is no new launch date for Starliner at this time. Starliner is one of the two spacecraft that NASA plans to use to send astronauts to the ISS. The other one is the SpaceX Crew Dragon model, which made its first manned flight three years ago and has since been used for ten manned space missions.
