Boeing yesterday postponed the planned launch of its CST-100 Starliner capsule from Florida’s Cape Canaveral bound for the International Space Station in what was to have been a crucial do-over test flight following a near-catastrophic failure during its 2019 debut.

“We’re confirming today’s #Starliner Orbital Flight Test-2 launch is scrubbed,” Boeing said on Twitter.

A Boeing spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The Starliner capsule loaded with supplies was scheduled to have blasted off atop an Atlas V rocket flown by the United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The launch had been planned for last Friday, but was postponed by NASA after the space station was briefly thrown out of control with seven crew members aboard, a mishap caused by the inadvertent reignition of jet thrusters on a newly docked Russian service module. Russia’s space agency blamed a software glitch.

Boeing had said as recently as Monday that Starliner was “powered up” with its “hatch closed” as engineers made final preparations, and that weather conditions were 60pc favorable for the launch.

Tuesday’s planned uncrewed mission was intended as a precursor to a closely watched crewed flight potentially to be conducted before the end of the year.

It was to be a key trial for the US aerospace giant after back-to-back crises – a pandemic that crushed demand for new planes and a safety scandal caused by two fatal 737 MAX crashes – that have damaged Boeing’s finances and engineering reputation.

Atlas V’s dual Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10A-4-2 engines were poised to send Starliner on a 181km suborbital trajectory before the capsule separates and flies under its own power to the space station in a roughly 24-hour overall journey.

The Starliner capsule headlined Boeing’s efforts against billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX to be the first to return Nasa astronauts to the space station from US soil in nearly a decade.

But a series of software glitches during the December 2019 debut launch resulted in its failure to dock at the orbital laboratory outpost.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has gone on to launch three crewed space station missions since 2020, with a fourth slated as early as October 31, according to Nasa.

Boeing has spent a year and a half correcting issues flagged during Nasa reviews, part of the US space agency’s strategy to ensure access to the sprawling international research satellite 400km above Earth.

Nasa in 2014 awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to build capsules to wean the US off its dependence on Russia’s Soyuz vehicles.

Reuters