By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) -The Atlas (NYSE:) V rocket bring Boeing (NYSE:) Co’s brand-new Starliner area pill will be rolled back to its garage to change a pressure valve, delaying the long-awaited veryfirst crewed test flight of the spacecraft for at least 10 more days, NASA stated on Tuesday.
The brand-new targeted launch date for the objective – essential to Boeing’s battle to acquire a higher share of profitable NASA organization now controlled by Elon Musk’s SpaceX – hasactually been set for May 17 at the earliest, according to NASA.
The launching flight of the CST-100 Starliner with astronauts aboard was initially setup for liftoff on Monday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a trip to the International Space Station (ISS).
But the launch was called off with less than 2 hours left in the countdown after a pressure guideline valve malfunctioned on the upper-stage liquid oxygen tank of the Atlas rocket as it was being prepared for blastoff.
The rocket, a different element from the Starliner capsule, is supplied and ran by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint endeavor.
Once released, the gumdrop-shaped pill and its two-astronaut team are anticipated stay docked to the area station for about a week before returning to Earth in a parachute- and airbag-assisted landing in the U.S. Desert Southwest.
Selected to trip aboard Starliner on its veryfirst c