As expected, the private space company Boeing and SpaceX and the American space Agency NASA decided to postpone the important launches of spacecraft, the development of which aimed at the resumption of the program of manned space flights to the ISS on its own. About porting the official website space Agency NASA. Recall now American astronauts get to the ISS as passengers Russian spacecraft “Soyuz”.
According to the latest plans, two important test launch of the spacecraft CST-100 Cockpit of the Boeing company was to be held this year. They decided to move to the next year. SpaceX, in turn, still wants to launch the first unmanned launch of the spacecraft Crew Dragon this year. However, later than previously planned. The first manned launch of the company Ilona Mask was moved to April 2019.
Boeing and SpaceX are developing manned spacecraft as part of commercial programs NASA. The Agency wants to shift the responsibilities of delivering American astronauts to the International space station on private American companies by refusing as a result of such services from the Russian space Agency “Roskosmos”. Creates Boeing CST-100 Cockpit – spacecraft in the future is able to bring on Board up to seven astronauts. The ship is planned to start using heavy carrier rocket “Atlas-5”, which deals with United Launch Alliance. SpaceX conducted a serious modernization of its cargo spacecraft Dragon, turning it into a manned spacecraft, is also able to bring on Board a crew of up to seven people. To output the ship into orbit is planned with the help of the carrier rocket Falcon 9. Before, both devices will be admitted to the official exploitation of the space Agency NASA wants to spend their manned and unmanned test runs.
First run without the Cockpit crew was supposed to happen in August this year and the first manned flight in November. Now Boeing has planned for an unmanned test launch of the new time – the beginning of 2019. The first manned launch, in turn, will be somewhere in the middle of 2019. In addition, Boeing was going to end this summer to test a system abort startup Cockpit, designed to save the crew in case of a serious accident at the start. To do this, at the bottom of the ship are four jet engines, which jettisoned the capsule with the crew from the main part of the rocket and take her to a safe distance. The test of this system, Boeing also decided to move in the spring of 2019-year. It will take place after an unmanned test run.
It seems that the main reason for the delay associated with the incident that occurred during trials held in June, when Boeing conducted static burn engines abort of the launch vehicle Cockpit. According to the engineers, the engine start was successful. They have worked right time, but during their off several valves of one of the engines failed. Eventually this led to the fuel leak. During testing the system does not receive any damage and no one was hurt. After the incident, Boeing said that going to thoroughly investigate a so-called “anomaly” and if necessary, make structural changes to the system.
“We have formed a separate team that deals with this problem,” — commented the project Manager Cockpit John Mulholland during the past 2 August press conference where it was announced the decision to postpone manned and unmanned test launch.
As for SpaceX, this company is also things did not go as planned. In January of this year, it was known that SpaceX is going to make an unmanned test launch Crew Dragon this August, and the subsequent manned test launch was to be held in December this year. Unmanned launch is now rescheduled for November this year. If he is successful, the company intends to conduct a manned test launch in April of next year. If SpaceX decides to again postpone the launch, the company runs the risk that it will overtake Boeing and the first to deliver people to the ISS on a private spacecraft.
Boeing and SpaceX postponed the launch of its first manned spacecraft
Nikolai Khizhnyak