Postponement of the launch to the International Space Station after problems with the new part | interior

The new ship is the Starliner, developed by aircraft maker Boeing. An unmanned test flight to the International Space Station will begin on Friday. It’s a rehearsal. Boeing wants to bring people to the International Space Station and back for the first time by the end of this year, on behalf of NASA. SpaceX’s competitor to entrepreneur Elon Musk is already doing this, in addition, NASA is working with the Blue Origin space company of Jeff Bezos, the richest person on Earth.

The cause of the problems is the Russian unit Nauka (science). It arrived at the space station on Thursday after a bumpy ride. After the clutch, the Nauka rockets fired unexpectedly. As a result, the location of the entire space station has changed. This can be reversed with missiles of another component, the Zvezda (Star) unit. The seven people aboard the space station were not in any danger, according to Earth flight monitoring.

Nauka also experienced engine problems en route to the International Space Station. As a result, it was exciting for a few days if he would ever make it to the International Space Station.

Associated with Nauka is an important Dutch component, the European Robotic Arm (ERA). They were launched together last Wednesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The 11-meter grip arm is intended to assist International Space Station crew members with spacewalks, inspections and science experiments, among other things. Dutch construction could “walk” outside the International Space Station.

Work on ERA began as early as the 1980s, but plans were changed several times and the launch was repeatedly delayed. Dutch astronaut André Kuipers was supposed to receive a robotic arm in 2012 when he himself set up on the International Space Station, but that didn’t happen. At the last minute, the launch was postponed for a week, from July 15 to 21.

The development and construction of the arm cost around 360 million euros. The Netherlands contributed about 240 million euros of this. The main contractor is Airbus Defense and Space in Leiden. It was founded in the 1960s under the name Fokker Ruimtevaart and was later called the Dutch Space.