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Boeing’s Starliner program launched its first crewed test flight on Wednesday, successfully completing its third attempt, marking a milestone in more than a decade.
The new spacecraft’s first crewed flight took place at 10:52 a.m. ET on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida.
The historic event will be streamed live on NASA’s website.
Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are on a journey to the International Space Station aboard the Starliner capsule.
According to the U.S. Space Command’s 45th Weather Squadron, weather conditions were 90 percent good for Wednesday morning’s launch, with cumulus clouds being the only concern.
The mission, known as Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft comparable to SpaceX’s proven Crew Dragon spacecraft and expand U.S. options for transporting astronauts to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency’s efforts are intended to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a press conference in May that the flight marked only the sixth crewed maiden spaceflight in U.S. history.
“It started with Mercury, then Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, then (SpaceX’s) Dragon and now Starliner,” Nelson said.
Williams will make history as the first woman to take part in such a mission.
Corey S. Houston/NASA
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams have been in quarantine since the end of April to protect their health.
The astronauts will spend just over 24 hours traveling to the space station.
After docking at about 12:15 p.m. ET on Thursday, Williams and Wilmore will join the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already on board and will live in the orbital laboratory for eight days.
Starliner is carrying a vital pump needed to repair the space station’s urine-processing system, which malfunctioned on May 29.
“This urine processor will take all of the crew’s urine and process it in the first stage of the water recovery system,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s International Space Station program manager. “The urine is then sent downstream to a water processor that turns it into drinking water. The station is truly designed to be a closed loop.”
Currently, urine must be stored on board in containers, making Starliner’s arrival at the space station too soon to wait.
The astronauts will test various functional aspects of the Starliner, including the performance of the spacecraft’s thrusters, how the spacesuits function inside the capsule, and manual piloting in case the crew needs to override the spacecraft’s autopilot.
During a May 31 press conference, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said Williams and Wilmore will also test Starliner’s “safety haven” feature, designed to provide an escape route for the space station’s crew if something goes wrong.
When the time comes for the astronauts to return, they will use the same Starliner capsule and parachute to land at one of several designated locations in the southwestern United States.
Years of stalled development, test-flight problems and other costly obstacles have slowed Starliner’s path to launch. Meanwhile, Boeing’s rival in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, SpaceX, has become the agency’s primary provider of astronaut transport.
The mission could be the last major milestone before NASA determines Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is ready for routine operations ferrying astronauts and cargo to the space station.
Previous attempts at manned launches on May 6 and June 1 were aborted due to several issues.
Two hours before launch on May 6, engineers discovered a problem with the second stage, or upper valve, of the Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The entire stack, including the rocket and spacecraft, was rolled back from the pad for testing and repairs.
The team also addressed small helium leaks in the spacecraft’s service module, “design vulnerabilities” in the propulsion system, and evaluated the Starliner capsule’s parachutes.
Starliner was automatically shut down by the ground launch sequencer, the rocket’s launch computer, on Saturday afternoon, just 3 minutes and 50 seconds before liftoff.
United Launch Alliance technicians and engineers spent the weekend assessing ground support equipment and inspecting three large computers housed in a shelter at the base of the launch pad, each identical and triple-redundant to ensure the safe launch of crewed missions.
“Imagine that big rack as a big computer. The functions of the computer as a controller are split up onto individual cards or printed wiring boards,” Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, said at a press conference on Saturday. “They’re all independent, but together they become a unified controller.”
Cards inside the computer are responsible for various key systems that need to run before launch, such as releasing bolts at the base of the rocket so that the rocket can launch after ignition.
The three computers need to communicate and agree with each other in the final four minutes before launch, but during Saturday’s countdown, a card in one of the computers responded six seconds slower than the other two, indicating something wasn’t right and it was automatically put on hold, Bruno said.
Over the weekend, engineers evaluated the computers, their power supplies, and the network communications between them. The team determined that the problem was with a single ground power supply built into one of the computers, which powers computer cards responsible for key events in the countdown, including a resupply valve in the rocket’s upper stage that caused the problem during the countdown, according to an update shared by NASA.
The Starliner team reported that the computer showed no signs of physical damage, so they removed it and replaced it with a spare. The ULA team said the other computer and its cards were also inspected and all are working fine as expected.
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