What to know about Boeing’s first spaceflight carrying NASA astronauts

After years of stumbles and delays, Boeing has finally launched astronauts to the Worldwide Area Station for NASA.

It is the primary flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule with a crew on board, a pair of NASA pilots who will try the spacecraft through the take a look at drive and a weeklong keep on the space station.

NASA turned to U.S. firms for astronaut rides after the space shuttles have been retired. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made 9 taxi journeys for NASA since 2020, whereas Boeing has managed solely a pair of empty take a look at flights.

Offered this tryout goes nicely, NASA will alternate between Boeing and SpaceX to get astronauts to and from the space station.

A take a look at the most recent experience and its shakedown cruise:

THE CAPSULE

White with black and blue trim, Boeing’s Starliner capsule is about 10 toes (3 meters) tall and 15 toes (4.5 meters) in diameter. It may well match as much as seven folks, although NASA crews usually will quantity 4. The corporate settled on the identify Starliner practically a decade in the past, a twist on the identify of Boeing’s early Stratoliner and the present Dreamliner planes.

Nobody was aboard Boeing’s two earlier Starliner take a look at flights. The primary, in 2019, was hit with software program hassle so extreme that its empty capsule could not attain the station till the second attempt in 2022. Then final summer time, weak parachutes and flammable tape cropped up that wanted to be fastened or eliminated. Wednesday’s launch was the third attempt with astronauts; two earlier countdowns have been scuttled by rocket-related points.

THE CREW

Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are retired Navy captains who spent months aboard the space station years in the past. They joined the take a look at flight after the unique crew bowed out because the delays piled up. Wilmore, 61, is a former fight pilot from Mount Juliet, Tennessee, and Williams, 58, is a helicopter pilot from Needham, Massachusetts.

THE TEST FLIGHT

Starliner blasted off on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Area Power Station. It is the primary time astronauts have ridden an Atlas since NASA’s Undertaking Mercury, beginning with John Glenn when he turned the primary American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Now 62 years later, Wednesday’s launch was the a centesimal for the top-of-the-line Atlas V, which is used to hoist satellites in addition to spacecraft. ULA is a three way partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Starliner ought to attain the space station with its seven residents on Thursday. Starliner will stay docked for simply over per week, present process checkouts earlier than touchdown within the American West.

STARLINER VS. DRAGON

Each Boeing and SpaceX’s capsules are designed to be autonomous and reusable. This Starliner is identical one which made the primary take a look at flight in 2019. Not like the SpaceX Dragons, Starliner has conventional hand controls and switches alongside touchscreens and, in response to the astronauts, is extra like NASA’s Orion capsules for moon missions. Plans known as for Wilmore and Williams to briefly take guide management to check out the techniques on their solution to the space station.

NASA gave Boeing, a longtime space contractor, greater than $4 billion to develop the capsule, whereas SpaceX bought $2.6 billion. SpaceX already was delivering provides to the space station, and merely refashioned its cargo capsule for crew. Whereas SpaceX makes use of the boss’ Teslas to get astronauts to the launch pad, Boeing has a extra conventional “astrovan.”

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