KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — Two NASA astronauts finally took their historic ride on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner making its first human spaceflight Wednesday morning.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams were back for a third time in a month at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41. They climbed on board the spacecraft sitting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that lifted off under mostly clear skies at 10:52 a.m. heading for the International Space Station.
“Let’s get going,” said Wilmore minutes before launch. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket and let’s push it to the heavens where all these tough Americans have prepared it to be.”
Let’s relive liftoff of #AtlasV carrying #Starliner #CFT for @NASA and @BoeingSpace! pic.twitter.com/MxlAZE45aK
— ULA (@ulalaunch) June 5, 2024
The pair are flying the Crew Flight Test mission, a followup to two uncrewed test flights of Starliner, the first of which came in 2019. That mission was a partial failure because it couldn’t rendezvous with the ISS, forcing a 2 1/2-year delay to Boeing’s program to remedy hardware, software and management issues.
The second uncrewed test flight in 2022 made it to the ISS, but post-launch review and preparation for the CFT brought further delays with more hardware issues popping up.
But half a decade later, Williams and Wilmore were set to fly. Finally, on May 6, they tried for the first time to take off from the Space Coast, but an issue with a fluttering valve on ULA’s upper Centaur stage scrubbed that attempt with about two hours to go. A second attempt this past Saturday was scrubbed within four minutes of launch because of ULA computers not synching at the launch pad.
“I am very impressed with my colleagues for being such optimists and such professionals.” said NASA astronaut for future Starliner crew member Mike Fincke during NASA’s live commentary leading up to launch. “They’ve been in quarantine for a long time. You know we’ve been waiting for over five years to get Starliner launched, but they are very, very excited about today.”
In the end, the third attempt went smoothly with ULA’s rocket arcing over the Atlantic to put Starliner on its way to space.
“This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a post-launch press conference. “I want to give my personal congratulations to the whole team that went through a lot of trial and tribulation, but they had perseverance, and that’s what we do at NASA. We don’t launch until it’s right.”
The duo have just over a day before they arrive with docking slated for 12:15 p.m. Thursday.
“Now Butch and Suni do what they do best,” Nelson said. “They’re test pilots, and they’re going to test this thing from izzard to gizzard.”
Wilmore and Williams will spend time on both the way up and down from the ISS testing out manual control overrides among other facets of the mostly automated spacecraft.
“There’s a thought of how things should be, but then there’s the reality how things need to be,” said Wilmore ahead of the launch attempt. “That’s what this test is all — everything we do is test. It’s been a process over the years that is such a benefit in all aspects of the capabilities of this spacecraft, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”
The duo began suiting up before 6 a.m. at KSC’s Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building venturing out after 7:30 a.m. to climb aboard the updated Starliner-themed Airstream Astrovan for the ride over to neighboring Cape Canaveral and make their way back on board the Starliner spacecraft.
Before driving over, they played a traditional prelaunch game with chief of the astronaut office, Joe Acaba, not leaving until they had lost to Acaba — this time in a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. The idea is that losing that game is the worst thing that happens on a launch day.
“Speaking as a child of the ’70s, a lot of us watched “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and Mr. Rogers would tell us to take our time to do it right, and that’s what we’re doing here,” Fincke said.
Just before 9 a.m., teams waited the conclusion of a weather brief before moving forward with hatch closure, but were given the go for hatch closure with less than two hours to go before launch.
“We are ready. We’re smiling out here, see you in a couple weeks,” said Wilmore.
Pictures: Launch day for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on Crew Flight Test
The astronauts will spend about eight days on board before returning to Earth for a landing in one of five locations in the desert in the southwestern United States.
If successful, this will be the final required mission for Boeing under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to achieve certification and set up regular rotational missions to the ISS, sharing duties with SpaceX.
“We need that access,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. “So right now we have we have one provider giving us that access to the space station. This will give us a second provider, which means if we have a problem with either, we have ways to get our crews to and from station, which helps keep the tempo that we’ve had for 23 years of having humans in low-Earth orbit, but also that opportunity to get the crews back if there’s an issue at all and keep that presence going.”
The pair are former Navy test pilots and veterans of two spaceflights each, with both having traveled on board Russia Soyuz capsules as well as the space shuttle. Wilmore is commander and joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2000 while Williams joined in 1998.
Williams was given the honor to name the capsule after it landed on the first uncrewed test flight in 2019, and dubbed it Calypso, in deference to oceanographer Jacques Cousteau’s famed vessel. The zero-gravity indicator for the mission follows the maritime theme, a stuffed narwhal that is also named Calypso.
The flight comes just over four years since SpaceX made its first crewed flight to the ISS with its Crew Dragon spacecraft, which has since flown 13 times carrying 50 humans to space. That includes the four members of Crew-8 awaiting along with the rest of the seven-person crew of Expedition 71 aboard the ISS.
Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate told the ISS crew to prepare for its new guests.
“Turn the porch light on, print out the Wi-Fi password and set the table for two more for dinner,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of people coming to visit.”
Starliner is only the sixth ever U.S.-based spacecraft to fly with NASA astronauts following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttle
and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Williams is the first woman to fly on an orbital test flight among NASA’s spacecraft.
Starliner will also become the first U.S.-based capsule to make a land touchdown as Crew Dragon, Apollo, Gemini and Mercury all made water
landings, as will the Artemis program’s Orion capsule that has yet to fly with humans. Russia’s Soyuz, though, features land touchdowns.
It also marked a return of human launches from Cape Canaveral’s launch pads, which last saw a crewed flight in 1968 with the launch of Apollo 7. Every Apollo mission afterward as well as the space shuttle and Crew Dragon launches have come from nearby Kennedy Space Center.
It’s the first time an Atlas V has flown with humans as well, although earlier iterations of the Atlas rocket flew several human spaceflights in the early 1960s including John Glenn’s historic trip to space as the first American to each orbit in 1962.
This also marked the 100th launch of an Atlas V rocket, and Wilmore had a special message for ULA after launch.
“They’ve been a member of the family for a long time, but now it’s official, and we want to welcome them to human spaceflight,” he said.
