CST-100 Starliner will perform the first test flight on the ISS in March 2019
The company Boeing is preparing to launch a new space transport to the International Space Station (ISS), which should start next month.
Along with SpaceX, NASA also signed a contract with Boeing to create a system of safe launches from American territory, since the only shuttle program retired in 2011.
The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will not take astronauts on its first flight to the ISS. After being automatically docked with the orbital laboratory, he will return to Earth for landing in Texas using a parachute.
If everything goes fine with the test flight, the company will send the first group of astronauts to the ISS in August 2019. The mission will begin at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (FL). To launch use Atlas-5 rocket. Initially we planned to hold the first start on August 27, 2018, but the anomaly during the collection engine test made Boeing postpone the mission until the problem was resolved. Starliner has not yet flown into space, but successfully passed a parachute test in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Starliner will be the second of two new space transports, preparing to debut in the coming months. February 28 is expected to launch the ship Crew Dragon from SpaceX, and the crew flight is scheduled for June.
It is surprising not only that these will be the first crew launches from American land in the last 8 years, but also the fact that this concerns the first private companies that launched people on the ISS.
