Cape Canaveral, Fla. — The third time was a charm for Boeing’s Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that was a decade in the making.
The new spacecraft’s maiden voyage with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The trip is expected to take 25 hours, with an arrival Thursday. WIlmore and Williams will spend just over a week at the International Space Station before climbing back into Starliner for a remote desert touchdown in the western U.S. on June 14.
“Let’s get going!” Wilmore called out minutes before liftoff.
Wilmore and Williams — retired Navy captains and former space station residents — stressed repeatedly before the launch that they had full confidence in Boeing’s ability to get it right with this test flight. Crippled by bad software, Starliner’s initial test flight in 2019 without a crew had to be repeated before NASA would let its astronauts strap in. The 2022 do-over went much better, but parachute problems later cropped up and flammable tape had to be removed from the capsule.
“I know it’s been a long road to get here,” NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said before the weekend delay.
Boeing was hired alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX a decade ago to ferry NASA’s astronauts to and from the space station. The space agency wanted two competing U.S. companies for the job in the wake of the space shuttles’ retirement, paying $4.2 billion to Boeing and just over half that to SpaceX, which refashioned the capsule it was using to deliver station supplies.
SpaceX launched astronauts into orbit in 2020, becoming the first private business to achieve what only three countries — Russia, the U.S. and China — had mastered. It has taken nine crews to the space station for NASA and three private groups for a Houston company that charters flights.
The liftoff was the 100th of an Atlas V for rocket maker United Launch Alliance. It was the first ride for astronauts on an Atlas rocket since John Glenn’s Mercury era more than 60 years ago; the rocket usually launches satellites and other spacecraft.
Despite the Atlas V’s perfect record, the human presence cranked up the tension for the scores of NASA and Boeing employees gathered at Cape Canaveral and Mission Control in Houston.
Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Dragon are designed to be fully autonomous and reusable. Wilmore and Williams occasionally will take manual control of Starliner on their way to the space station, to check out its systems.
If the mission goes well, NASA will alternate between SpaceX and Boeing for taxi flights, beginning next year. The backup pilot for this test flight, Mike Fincke, will strap in for Starliner’s next trip.
“When you have a new spacecraft, you need to learn all about it and this has been a great exercise,” Fincke told reporters late last week.
Merit Street Media
