After two trips to the launch pad that didn’t end up going into space, two NASA astronauts finally headed into orbit on Wednesday in a vehicle built by aerospace giant Boeing.
The maiden voyage of Starliner, a 15-foot-wide capsule with astronauts on board, comes four years and six days after SpaceX, the other company NASA has hired to provide astronaut rides, launched its first crewed mission to the International Station. Spatial. . Boeing will now offer that service as well, but a series of costly delays repeatedly prevented astronauts from flying the company’s vehicle earlier. SpaceX, once seen as an upstart, has flown 13 crews into orbit in total.
The long-awaited flight of the Boeing vehicle is the latest step in NASA’s efforts to rely more on the private sector for its human spaceflight program.
“This is another milestone in this remarkable history of NASA,” said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator during a post-launch press conference.
When the Starliner arrives at the space station on Thursday, it will join a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule already docked there. NASA officials have been adamant that they want to have two different U.S. spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts into orbit.
“We always like to have a backup,” Mr. Nelson said. “It makes it safer for our astronauts.”
If the vehicle’s mission goes well, it will also provide some good news for Boeing, whose aviation safety record is under intense scrutiny after a side panel on an Alaska Airlines jet exploded during a flight in beginning of this year.
Boeing’s space division has also been under pressure, with work on the Starliner taking years longer than the company or NASA had expected. Technical pitfalls included inadequate software testing, corroded fuel valves, flammable tape and a key component in the parachute system that turned out to be weaker than expected.
Minutes before liftoff, Butch Wilmore, the mission commander, said, “Let’s put some fire on this rocket. Let’s push it into the sky.”
Suni Williams, the other crew member serving as pilot, added: “Let’s go, Calypso, take us to space and back,” referring to the capsule she named after the ship used by oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
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“Suni and I are honored to share this dream of space flight with each of you. So with that, let’s go and put some fire in this rocket and push it to heaven while these tough Americans have prepared it to be.” “Let’s go, Calypso. Take us to space and back.”
At 10:52 a.m. ET, the engines of an Atlas V rocket fired, lifting the Starliner spacecraft on an arcing path into space. The launch and early parts of today’s orbit flight provided welcome relief, unfolding smoothly.
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“Houston, Starliner. “Roger.”
“I’m smiling, believe me,” said Mark Nappi, the Boeing official in charge of the Starliner. “But it’s a bit of controlled emotion, because there are many phases to this mission. And we just finished the first one.”
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“You have a good choke.” “Good Grant.” “Good SRB burn.” “Good SRB.”
A minor glitch involved a system that provides cooling during the trip to orbit. The cooling system, known as a sublimator, used slightly more water than expected. Once in orbit, the spacecraft switched to another cooling system, a radiator, and while engineers will investigate what happened, it will not affect the mission.
Mr. Wilmore and Mrs. Williams are scheduled to dock with the station at 12:15 p.m. Thursday.
Along the way, Mr. Wilmore and Mrs. Williams will take the time to test manual flight of the spacecraft, something that is not normally needed except in emergencies. Life support systems will also be fully controlled.
The astronauts will then spend at least eight days on the space station before returning to Earth. The mission has a total of 87 test targets. “There are many, I would call ergonomic types of flight test targets,” Mr Nappi said. “How do the seats fit? How do suits work? What do the screens look like?”
After the mission, NASA and Boeing will review data from the flight to complete certification of the Starliner. The spacecraft would then be ready to begin operational flights once a year to transport NASA crews for six-month stays on the space station. Each Starliner capsule — Boeing has two for orbital missions — is designed for 10 missions.
The road to Wednesday’s flight was years in the making.
In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, the rocket company run by Elon Musk, to build replacements for the spacecraft that had carried astronauts to and from the space station before they were retired in 2011. NASA had begun to paid Russia to fly astronauts into orbit on Soyuz rockets.
Congress was skeptical, repeatedly cutting the money NASA had requested for the commercial crew program. At the time, SpaceX was growing, but it wasn’t the dominant force it has become in the rocket launch industry today. Boeing’s selection helped reassure lawmakers that NASA was making a sound investment.
NASA initially said SpaceX’s Starliner and Crew Dragon could be ready by 2017.
Both companies took longer than planned, a not unusual occurrence in the aerospace industry.
But in December 2019, Boeing seemed to be at home. Then, a test of the Starliner without astronauts on board went awry due to software problems, and a planned docking was canceled. NASA labeled the flight a “high-visibility close call” because software flaws could have led to the destruction of the spacecraft if not fixed before reentry.
Boeing and NASA decided to repeat the test without a crew, but that test was delayed by corroded fuel valves, and the Starliner did not launch again until May 2022.
Then more issues arose. The protective tape that was wrapped around the wire insulation proved to be flammable, and a key but weak component in the parachute system could have broken if the Starliner’s three parachutes had not deployed properly.
Those delays cost Boeing $1.4 billion, and while the Starliner remained grounded, SpaceX launched nine crewed missions for NASA (one, Crew-8, is currently docked at the station) and four additional commercial missions with non-NASA passengers. -s on board.
This year’s round of release attempts began on May 6. That flight was marred by a malfunctioning valve on the Atlas V rocket. A small helium leak was later discovered in the Starliner’s propulsion system, leading to weeks of investigation.
The second launch attempt on Saturday slowed to 3 minutes and 50 seconds before liftoff, until the computers autonomously handling the final parts of the launch sequence ran into a problem and stopped the countdown.
Over the next few days, technicians replaced a faulty power component, setting the stage for Wednesday’s successful launch.
Niraj Cokshi contributed to the reporting.