US Spacecraft Starliner's Test Flight Rescheduled For December 20 - United Launch Alliance

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th December, 2019) US space launch operator United Launch Alliance (ULA) said on Friday it had scheduled the test flight of the Starliner spacecraft for December 20.

"The launch of the Atlas V rocket carrying Boeing's Orbital Flight Test (OFT) Starliner spacecraft is now targeted for Dec. 20," ULA said in a statement.

It was previously planned that the first unmanned flight of the Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) would take place on December 17. Then, the launch was postponed to December 19 due to problems with the launch vehicle.

"We successfully conducted a wet dress rehearsal (WDR), a critical pre-launch milestone, on Friday, Dec. 6. We were unable to complete the milestone on Thursday, Dec. 5, as planned due to a weather-related launch delay of an International Space Station re-supply mission, which created a range resource conflict. This caused our targeted launch date to shift to the right by one day," the company explained.

Boeing and rival company SpaceX are independently developing systems to launch astronauts into space from the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle's retirement in 2011.

On Wednesday, the launch of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the ISS was delayed due to adverse weather conditions. It was launched from Cape Canaveral a day later � on Thursday, December 5.

Since the shuttle's demise, NASA has sent astronauts to and from the station by purchasing seats on Russia's Soyuz system.

In March, SpaceX's new Crew Dragon spacecraft made its first test unmanned flight to the ISS. It is expected that the Crew Dragon and Starliner would perform test manned flights in the first half of 2020, after which they will be certified by NASA for full-time missions on the ISS.

The Starliners will be launched by the Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral. The first stage of Atlas V uses the Russian engine RD-180 developed by NPO Energomash.