Cape Canaveral, United States:
After years of delays, Boeing's Starliner capsule will carry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, a milestone for the US aerospace giant and NASA.
The flight, a final test before Starliner takes up regular service for the space agency, is crucial for Boeing, whose reputation has suffered lately due to safety problems with its passenger jets.
For NASA, the stakes are also high: Having a second option for human spaceflight besides SpaceX's Dragon vehicles is “very important,” said Dana Weigel, manager of the agency's International Space Station program.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will depart from Cape Canaveral at 10:34 PM (0234 GMT Tuesday) on Monday if forecast favorable weather for the launch continues.
Starliner will be launched into orbit by an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Once in space, one of Wilmore and Williams' jobs will be to temporarily manually control the spacecraft during a test.
The astronauts, both Navy-trained veterans of the space program, have each been to the ISS twice, once on a shuttle and then aboard a Russian Soyuz ship.
“It will be like going back home,” Williams said ahead of the launch.
As for the Boeing spacecraft, Wilmore said, “Everything is new.”
Hiccup expected
Starliner's scheduled arrival at the ISS is around 0500 GMT on Wednesday and will remain there for just over a week. Tests will be conducted to ensure the capsule is working properly, and then Williams and Wilmore will board the capsule again to return home.
A successful mission would help dispel the bitter taste of the Starliner program's numerous setbacks.
In 2019, the capsule was not placed on the correct trajectory during a first unmanned test flight and returned without reaching the ISS.
Then in 2021, as the rocket was on the launch pad for another flight, blocked valves forced another postponement.
The empty ship eventually reached the ISS in May 2022. But problems since then delayed Monday's crewed test flight, necessary for the capsule to be certified for use by NASA on regular ISS missions.
NASA Administrator Jim Free had predicted that the mission would not be without problems.
“We certainly have some uncertainties in this mission, things that we expect to learn because it is a test mission. We may encounter things that we don't expect,” Free said, noting that Starliner is only the sixth U.S.-built class of ships for NASA. astronauts.
SpaceX's Dragon capsule joined that exclusive club in 2020, following the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs.
In 2014, the agency awarded fixed-price contracts of $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX to develop the capsules.
Once Starliner is fully operational, NASA hopes to switch between SpaceX and Boeing ships to transport astronauts to the ISS.
Although the ISS will be shut down in 2030, both Starliner and Dragon could be used to taxi people to future private space stations, which several companies plan to build.
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