Joey Roulette

CAPE CANAVERAL (Fla.) -Boeing launched its new Starliner capsule Thursday in a test flight uncrewed bound for the International Space Station. This mission aimed to give the company a much needed success following more than two-years of delays and expensive engineering failures.

CST-100 Starliner, a gumdrop-shaped rocket with a starliner shape, was launched shortly before 7:00 p.m. ET (2300 GMT), from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It was carried aloft on a Atlas (NYSE), V rocket supplied by United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture Boeing-Lockheed Martin.

If all goes well, the capsule will reach the space station in approximately 24 hours. Then it will dock with the outpost on Friday night orbiting around 250 miles (400km) above Earth.

Boeing (NYSE:) is expected to stay attached to the space station for four to five more days before undocking.

The Starliner’s successful launch will bring NASA a significant step closer to having a reliable second means to ferry astronauts to the station.

Nine years after the end of the shuttle program, crewed orbital flights from American soil to orbit in 2020 have been resumed by the U.S. Space Agency. The agency relies on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, and Crew Dragon capsules, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to fly NASA astronauts.

The only way to reach the orbital laboratory before the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft was via hitchhiking.

NASA chief Bill Nelson said to Reuters that the backup was important for the country hours before liftoff.

Boeing’s Thursday launch comes as it struggles to overcome successive crises within its aviation business. Boeing has had to pay $595 million to date for Starliner alone since its 2019 failure to send a crewed spacecraft into orbit.

PAYLOAD & MODEL PASSENGER

Starliner wasn’t flying empty to orbit. A research capsule carrying data about the cabin environment during flight, and 500 pounds worth of cargo were also on board. The crew included three NASA astronauts, an Italian astronaut, and three Russian cosmonauts.

Two U.S. astronauts are going to board the capsule in Starliner’s time on Starliner, where they will take photographs of its interior and unload supplies.

Thursday’s launch was a repetition of the 2019 space station test mission, which failed due to a software glitch. Aerojet Rocketdyne provided Starliner’s propulsion systems, which caused problems that forced Boeing to abandon its attempt to launch it last summer.

Nine months later, the spacecraft remained grounded while two companies argued over why its fuel valves were stuck shut.

Boeing claims that the problem has been fixed and will redesign the fuel valve system of the propulsion system following this week’s flight.

Starliner, a fixed-price NASA contract worth $4.5 billion was used to develop the Starliner. This contract provided an additional avenue for SpaceX and U.S. Space Agency to reach low-Earth orbit.

Starliner might fly its first crew of astronauts in Fall if it succeeds on the second uncrewed flight to orbit. NASA officials however caution that the time frame may be extended.

Butch Wilmore (NASA astronaut) and Mike Fincke (NASA astronaut) were selected to fly Starliner’s maiden crewed missions. NASA officials were reluctant to commit two astronauts on a launch date that is not clear, but they said Wednesday that the mission might end up carrying at most two of the four Starliner astronauts currently training for the test flight.