Moscow. August 13. INTERFAX.RU – The American company Boeing has postponed the launch of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station until at least September, a Boeing spokesman said during a briefing.
“We will not launch the ship in August, but not because we didn’t try, the team did a lot of checks and attempts to solve the problem, what they did is incredible,” the spokesman said.
Earlier it became known that Boeing will dismantle the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft from the Atlas V launch vehicle and return it to the assembly shop for troubleshooting.
A Boeing spokesman said during the briefing that the problems that caused the transfer of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) were probably caused by valve corrosion caused by oxidant leaks.
The company reportedly found problems with 13 oxidizer valves in Starliner engines. At the moment, specialists, having carried out thermal and electrical procedures, were able to restore the work of nine of them.
Earlier it was planned that the CST-100 Starliner will go to the ISS) on July 30, where it will dock to the forward port of the Harmony module, however, due to the investigation of the incident with the Russian Nauka module (on which the engines spontaneously turned on on July 29 and turned the station 45 degrees) , the launch was postponed to August 3.
However, on August 3, during pre-flight checks of the ship's systems, Boeing specialists discovered that the valves of the Starliner propulsion system did not open as they should, which was why the launch had to be canceled three hours before launch.
