by CAPE CANABARAL – May the Rocket Force be with you!
An Atlas V rocket rolled to its launch pad on Saturday (May 4), also Star Wars Day, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station days before its historic first mission with astronauts. On top of the United Launch Alliance booster was the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which will make its first manned flight after launch no earlier than Monday (May 6).
The instant launch window opens at 10:34 pm EDT (0234 GMT Tuesday, May 7) and you can watch the historic mission of the International Space Station (ISS) live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA Television.
The mission, called Crew Flight Test (CFT), will send two veteran NASA astronauts and former US Navy test pilots aloft: Butch Wilmore will be in command of the mission and Suni Williams will be the pilot. The duo is in quarantine at the nearby Kennedy Space Center.
Related: I flew the Boeing Starliner spacecraft in 4 different simulators. Here’s what I learned (video, photos)
I joined a group of about 35 reporters on a small hill about a mile away from Space Launch Complex 41 for my first Floridian rocket rollout where the booster kept going the right way toward the pad.
Back in August 2006, I tried to see the STS-115 mission fly to the ISS. Then life happened. During my flight from Canada to the Space Coast, lightning struck the Atlantis launch pad. As NASA took the time to double check all systems, Tropical Storm Ernesto made its way up the coast.
So, instead of launching, I saw Atlantis being pulled back towards shelter – and then pausing in its path to the Vehicle Assembly Building, and pulling back to the launch pad when the tropical storm moved far enough to do so as a safe option. I definitely missed that address, but no regrets, because that situation was unique.
Starliner’s presence here twenty years later is also unique, as the first spacecraft to carry astronauts into space from Cape Canaveral since Apollo 7 on October 11, 1968.
And no one has flown an Atlas rocket since Gordon Cooper’s Mercury-Atlas 9 mission on May 15, 1963 (almost exactly 61 years before the CFT Starliner launch attempt).
If CFT goes as planned, Boeing will soon join SpaceX in sending astronauts to the ISS for six months at a time. That’s after both companies received commercial crew contracts from NASA in 2014, valued at Boeing at the time at $4.2 billion, compared to SpaceX’s $2.6 billion.
While SpaceX has sent 12 crewed missions to ISS since 2020, including an astronaut test flight, Starliner’s waited four more years. Boeing’s first ISS flight in December 2019 was plagued by so many computer glitches that Starliner never made it to its assigned orbit. After the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and numerous solutions were implemented, Starliner finally made its second successful unmanned test flight in May 2022.
CFT was also expected to launch earlier, as late as 2023. Critical issues found last year, however, delayed it as Boeing officials sought to address issues with the loads on the capsule’s main parachute, as well like wiring covered with flammable tape.
NASA and Boeing looked carefully at all the details before this flight and they kept at a press conference on Friday (May 3) that everything is ready to go to safety. The weather is also 95% going to try to launch on Monday on the Space Coast; having said that, checks for proper technical fit and good weather will continue up until the time of lift.
Related: 1st Boeing Starliner astronauts ready to launch to ISS for NASA (exclusive)
RELATED STORIES:
– Boeing Starliner astronauts do a dress rehearsal before the May 6 launch (photos, video)
– Boeing Starliner spacecraft will not fly private missions yet, officials say
– ‘I’m sure we’ll find things out’: NASA astronauts fly to launch site for 1st crewed Boeing Starliner mission to ISS on May 6 (photos)
Starliner-1 will be the spacecraft’s first operational mission, no earlier than 2025, and will send at least three astronauts to the ISS: NASA’s Mike Fincke (who also serves as a CFT backup astronaut), along with Scott Tingle of NASA and Canadian. Joshua Kutryk from the Space Agency (the capcom for CFT’s ascent stage.)
NASA plans to alternate SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner to launch astronauts from US soil at least every six months. Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft will continue to launch a number of agency astronauts, for both technical and policy reasons.
Although NASA aims to have these commercial crew vehicles working over the life of the ISS, the orbital complex is expected to end operations in 2030. Russia may pull out as early as 2028, although the timelines all subject to flux as the countries work on implementing the next one. – generation of space programs.
