NEW YORK, December 20. /TASS/. NASA has cancelled the planned docking of Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday.
Bridenstine was asked whether the docking was cancelled following an unpredictable turn of events. "Yes, we were debating that just maybe an hour ago. And I would say that that’s safe to take off the table at this point," he responded, citing the amount of fuel that was burned.
He confirmed that the timing was off and the spacecraft did not know precisely where it was in the sequence, doing an orbital insertion burn when it wasn’t. "Very precise attitude keeping burns fuel. So, by the time we got that figured out we had burned sufficient fuel that if we would have done an orbit insertion burn to get to the International Space Station, it might not have been enough," he explained.
"I think that the right decision was made by the people in the room at the time," Bridenstine concluded. According to him, the decision was made "to make sure that we can get the spacecraft safely back to White Sands" Missile Range in New Mexico.
The new US spacecraft Starliner developed by Boeing was launched for the first time in its uncrewed version to the orbital outpost on Friday. The spacecraft lifted off from the US Air Force station on Cape Canaveral in Florida atop an Atlas V carrier rocket.
Boeing’s Starliner did not manage to reach correct course to dock to the ISS on Friday. "Starliner has an off-nominal insertion, but we have spacecraft control," Boeing Space said via its Twitter account.