U.S. astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams left Earth on Wednesday in a new Boeing spaceship, after a string of delays and engineering problems that spanned a decade.
Following two scuttled launch attempts over the past month, the third try appeared to be the charm with a seamless countdown. Starliner‘s first crewed test flight blasted off at 10:52 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is the sixth time in history NASA astronauts had launched on a new spacecraft.
The United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket hoisted the capsule into the sky, blowing out enormous plumes behind it. NASA confirmed the ship, named Calypso by Williams, reached space minutes later.
“Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you,” Wilmore said right before liftoff. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket, let’s push it to the heavens where all these tough Americans are prepared to be.”
If the flight goes as planned, Wilmore and Williams will reach the International Space Station on Thursday and remain at the lab, about 250 miles above the planet, for about a week. Williams is the first woman to pilot a new orbital spacecraft.
For the ride home, rather than plop the astronauts into the ocean as SpaceX does, Boeing will bring the astronauts home to the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. A system of parachutes and air bags should cushion the capsule’s desert landing.
NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build spaceships to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station in 2014. While SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule went into service four years ago and has since ferried at least 50 people into orbit, Boeing’s Starliner has yet to pass muster. The legacy company has struggled to resolve a series of issues with the spacecraft.
Credit: NASA / Joel Kowsky
But problems with the rocket — not Starliner — caused the past two scrubbed launches. On Saturday, a ground computer that takes over when the rocket is in the final minutes of the countdown executed the abort. Teams have since swapped out a faulty power distribution unit that caused the automated launch cancellation. Mission managers inspected the replacement and approved the rocket for another liftoff attempt this week.
A successful flight of Starliner would help to secure a second commercial carrier for taking astronauts into space. No longer serviced by its own Space Shuttle, NASA hitched rides on Russian rockets after 2011 to the space station. Though SpaceX has provided a taxi service for NASA since 2020, the agency never intended to have all its eggs in Elon Musk‘s basket and says it’s still crucial to have a backup.
If certified, Starliner missions will have the ability to take up to four astronauts to the station at a time, increasing the amount of research at the orbiting lab.
“Right now we only have two ways to get humans into space. One was with the Soyuz and our Russian partners, and we all know that our relationship with the Russian Federation is a little bit tricky,” said Mike Fincke, an alternate NASA astronaut for the Starliner crew. “This redundant way to go is so that if something goes wrong with anybody, we still can get people up and down to the International Space Station.”
Starliner is carrying close to 800 pounds of cargo, which includes food, clothing, exercise gear, medical supplies, photo and media equipment, tools, and other items, including a thumb drive of 3,500 images of children’s artwork.
