Boeing’s Starliner first historic astronaut launch

May 6, 2024 - May 15, 2024 - Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will make its inaugural crewed launch carrying two NASA astronauts, Barry “Butch”  Wilmore and Suni Williams, to the International Space Station.

Related Graphics

View More

Blue Origin reusable rocket to launch

Starship to launch fake satellites for first time

Milestone reached in SpinLaunch centrifuge tests

The growing threat of space junk

Japan launches DSN-3 satellite

Largest commercial satellites in low Earth orbit

Ancient space rock may have helped life

Ageing space station leaks air

Earth has captured a new mini-moon (for two months)

Mission to find life under Jupiter moon’s ice

SpaceX tests new high-tech suit for first private spacewalk

The full Moon will be a supermoon

Mars’ subsurface could harbour an ocean

Astronauts wait to return to Earth

Boeing Starliner stuck in space

Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket inaugural launch

Veteran Hubble Space Telescope timeline

Starship rocket returns to Earth for first time

China’s dark side of the moon spacecraft returns home

NASA repairs Voyager 1 spacecraft

Successful launch for NASA’s new solar sail experiment

Moon-based astronomy needs sites to be protected

U.S. company makes historic moon landing

Great North American eclipse

U.S. unsettled over Russian space nuclear weapon

Russian cosmonaut sets most time in space record

Japan’s moon lander Slim resumes mission

Mars helicopter ends ground-breaking mission

Private U.S. Moon mission in jeopardy

SpaceX leads the field in commercial space flight

Astronauts Wilmore and Williams, two of NASA’s veteran astronauts who have completed four previous spaceflights, 11 spacewalks, and 500 days in orbit between them, will ride the Starliner atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at 22:30EDT (02:30GMT) on Monday, May 6.

”In less than two weeks, the next flight we take we’ll be laying on our backs and (launching) into the heavens,” Wilmore told reporters after arriving at Kennedy Space Center.

Completing the Starliner’s Crew Flight Test, or CFT, will “broaden (NASA’s) capability to and from space station, and that’s vitally important,” he said. “We’re excited to be here.”

NASA awarded two contracts in 2014, one to SpaceX valued at $2.6 billion and the other to Boeing for $4.2 billion, to develop independent spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

Boeing launched its Starliner on two unpiloted test flights in December 2019 and May 2022, but the craft experienced major software and parachute issues.

Wilmore and Williams, both former Navy test pilots, will dock at the ISS on May 8 and return to Earth on May 15 or shortly after that. If the mission goes well, NASA plans to begin operational Starliner crew rotation flights in 2025, alternating crew launches with SpaceX.