Boeing Starliner spacecraft prepared for first manned space mission – World

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft received the ‘green light’ for its first manned space mission, scheduled for the early hours of next Monday from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

The information was released this Friday by NASA and the North American aircraft manufacturer. The head of the North American space agency’s commercial crew program, Steve Stich, highlighted that the mission’s final preparatory reviews were positive and the spacecraft obtained final authorization for its journey.

The capsule will take off powered by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from a platform at Cape Canaveral at 10:34 pm on Monday (3:34 am Lisbon), with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board.

“We will have a whole new adventure. This is an important part of our space exploration and what I call the ‘golden age of space exploration'”, said NASA chief Bill Nelson this Friday.

The success of this mission will mean that NASA will have a second supplier, after SpaceX, to transport manned missions and cargo to the space laboratory, following contracts signed with the two companies in 2014.

“We have strived for the commercial team to have two independent space transportation systems,” Stich highlighted.

If successfully launched, the spacecraft will arrive at the ISS on Wednesday and its two crew members will remain at the station for about a week, before returning to the southwestern United States via an improved Starliner parachute system.

Last year, problems detected in the parachute system and in some fiberglass ribbons forced the mission to be postponed when there was a month and a half to go before takeoff, scheduled for July 21st.

Boeing successfully launched the unmanned OFT 2 mission on May 19, 2022, which docked with the ISS the next day, where the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft remained for four days before autonomously separating and then landing in New Mexico. (USA).

The capsule, 5 meters high and 4.6 meters in diameter, is reusable (with a limit of up to 10 uses) and has a maximum capacity of seven people, although manned missions commissioned by NASA under this program normally have four or five passengers.