Boeing’s Starliner capsule finally launches, carries crew into space for first piloted test flight

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying astronauts for the first time in six decades finally blasted off Wednesday and safely boosted Boeing’s long-delayed Starliner crew ferry ship into space for its first piloted flight, a trailblazing cruise to the International Space Station.

The workhorse Atlas 5’s Russian-built RD-180 first stage engine roared to life at 10:52 p.m. EDT, followed an instant later by ignition of two strap-on solid fuel boosters.

Generating a combined 1.6 million pounds of thrust, the 197-foot Atlas 5 majestically climbed skyward from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, arcing away to the northeast on a trajectory matching the orbital path of the space station — a requirement for rendezvous missions.

Monitoring the automated ascent were commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both veteran Navy test pilots and active-duty NASA astronauts with four earlier spaceflights to their credit, 11 spacewalks between them and a combined 500 days in orbit.

“We all know that when the going gets tough, and it often does, the tough get going,” Wilmore radioed controllers from the Starliner’s cockpit before launch. “And you have. And Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you. So with that, let’s get going! Let’s put some fire in this rocket and push it toward the heavens!”

He got his wish.

The Atlas 5 dropped the Starliner off with a velocity just shy of what’s required to reach orbit, a precaution to make sure the crew ship would re-enter and land safely even if a major problem knocked out its own propulsion system. But there were no problems, and a thruster firing 31 minutes after liftoff completed the ascent phase of the mission, putting the ship in the planned orbit.

The astronauts planned to test the Starliner’s manual controls and then closely monitor an automated 25-hour rendezvous with the station, catching up from behind and below before moving in for docking at the lab’s forward port just past noon Thursday.

The long-awaited flight marked the first launch of an Atlas 5 with astronauts aboard and the first for the Atlas family of rockets since astronaut Gordon Cooper took off just a few miles away on the Mercury program’s final flight 61 years ago.

It also marks the first piloted flight of the Starliner, Boeing’s answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, an already operational, less expensive spacecraft that has carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of them to the space station, since an initial piloted test flight in May 2020.

Despite a larger NASA contract, Boeing’s Starliner is four years behind SpaceX getting astronauts to space. But Wilmore and Williams say the spacecraft is now safer and more capable thanks to numerous upgrades and fixes.

“I’m not going to say it’s been easy. It’s a little bit of (an) emotional roller coaster,” Williams said before the crew’s first launch attempt. But, she added, “we knew we would get here eventually. It’s a solid spacecraft. I don’t think I would really want to be in any other place right now.”

By Agencies