Boeing’s Starliner Is Set for Its First Crewed Spaceflight
Starliner’s first crewed launch will mark just the sixth time ever that NASA astronauts have flown in a brand-new spacecraft
Boeing’s Starliner capsule will join a very exclusive club today (May 6), if all goes according to plan.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is set to launch Starliner and its two passengers, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 10:34 p.m. EDT (0234 GMT on May 7). You can watch the action live at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.
The liftoff will kick off Crew Flight Test (CFT), a roughly 10-day shakeout cruise to the International Space Station (ISS) that will be Starliner’s first-ever astronaut mission. Such crewed debuts to Earth orbit have happened just five times in American history, as NASA chief Bill Nelson noted during a press briefing on Friday (May 3).
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“So, you think of it: The first time [NASA astronauts] have flown on a new spacecraft started with Mercury, then with Gemini, then with Apollo, then space shuttle, then Dragon and now Starliner,” Nelson said. “So it is a historical day; it’s a wonderful day.”
Dragon is the capsule built by SpaceX, which, like Boeing, won a contract from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program back in 2014 to carry agency astronauts to and from the ISS.
The goal was to get at least one American crewed vehicle up and running as soon as safely…
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