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full screen Boeing’s Starliner at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on the night of Tuesday Swedish time. Photo: Terry Renna/AP/TT
Boeing’s manned Starliner spacecraft was supposed to have launched on the night of Tuesday Swedish time, but the launch was stopped two hours before departure due to a safety problem, the US space agency Nasa announces.
The two astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were both strapped into their seats and ready to travel to the International Space Station, when a possible problem with an oxygen device was discovered.
“We are canceling tonight’s postponement attempt. As I’ve said before, safety is the top priority for Nasa,” writes Space Agency chief Bill Nelson in a post on X.
The next possible opportunities for a new postponement attempt fall on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.
The test flight, which is already several years late, is an important step for Nasa, which has long been looking for another private partner to be able to take astronauts to the ISS, something that Elon Musk’s Space X succeeded in doing in 2020.