Belen Liotti
(CNN) — Boeing’s spaceflight program may reach a major milestone Monday night with the launch of its Starliner spacecraft, which will carry two NASA astronauts into orbit.
The mission, called Crew Flight Test, is scheduled to take off this Monday at 10:34 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Live coverage of the event will air on NASA channels starting at 6:30 p.m. ET this Monday, according to the space agency.
The event has been a decade in the making, due to Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft worthy of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Development delays, test flight problems and other costly setbacks slowed Starliner’s path to the launch pad. Meanwhile, Boeing’s rival in NASA’s commercial crew program, SpaceX, became the go-to transportation provider for the space agency’s astronauts.
Boeing successfully takes off Starliner, its rocket to take astronauts to the International Space Station
Now, NASA and Boeing have finally deemed the Starliner spacecraft ready for its ultimate test: allowing astronauts to test the vehicle in outer space.
Veteran NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will be aboard this Monday’s mission, traveling on the Starliner to the International Space Station for a week-long stay.
Throughout their flight, Wilmore and Williams will perform a series of tests, including briefly taking over the controls of the autonomous spacecraft and evaluating how the vehicle performs for astronauts.
A trouble-free flight could be a victory for Boeing’s spaceflight program and for the company in general, which has had problems with its commercial aircraft division.
Here’s what you need to know about Starliner’s journey ahead of its historic crewed test flight.
The human component
Boeing officials sought to make clear that Starliner operates separately from the company’s commercial aircraft sector. And the Starliner team’s primary interest is ensuring a smooth test mission and crew safety, according to Mark Nappi, vice president and director of Boeing’s Starliner program.
“We have humans flying in this vehicle. We always take it very seriously,” Nappi said during a press conference last week. “I spent my career in this business and I was always at the top of the list.”
NASA astronauts Suni Williams, left, and Butch Wilmore pose for a photo after arriving at the Starliner launch site in Florida on April 25, 2024. Credit: Terry Renna/AP.
The two Starliner astronauts waited years for the spacecraft to be deemed ready to carry crew. After several astronauts cycled in and out of assignments on the Starliner crew flight test, Wilmore received her designation in 2020. NASA moved Williams to this flight in 2022 after initially assigning her in 2018 to a later Starliner mission.
SpaceX successfully launches Starship but then loses contact with the giant rocket
“We’ve had a couple of release dates and we’ve said, ‘Okay, we’re ready to go,’” Williams said at a news conference Wednesday. “But now it’s like, hell, five days. In fact, it’s finally real, and I have to pinch myself a little to understand that we’re actually going to do it.”
At a press conference last month, Steve Stich, director of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said that NASA required Boeing and SpaceX to meet a certain threshold regarding the risk of the mission resulting in astronaut deaths: 1 in 270.
“Boeing beats that figure with a crew loss of 1 in 295,” he said.
Starliner’s difficult path
Boeing received a NASA contract to build Starliner in 2014, at the same time the space agency selected SpaceX to build its Crew Dragon capsule.
NASA awarded the companies deals worth a combined $6.8 billion, with hopes that Boeing and SpaceX would have their capsules ready to fly as early as 2017.
That expectation was not met.
Taking longer than planned, SpaceX conducted the inaugural astronaut launch of its Crew Dragon capsule in the summer of 2020. Since then, it has completed 13 missions in orbit for NASA astronauts and paying customers.
But Boeing, even though NASA officials initially believed the Starliner would be ready before SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, faced years of delays, setbacks and additional expenses that cost the company more than $1 billion, according to public financial records.
In particular, the first Starliner test mission, conducted without a crew in late 2019, was plagued with errors. The vehicle failed in orbit, a symptom of software problems that included a coding error that knocked out an internal clock by 11 hours.
A second uncrewed flight test in 2022 uncovered additional software issues and issues with some of the vehicle’s thrusters.
Those snags delayed the inaugural crewed flight until 2023. But then a new set of problems arose: The spacecraft’s parachutes had some components that were weaker than expected, and duct tape on the vehicle was found to be flammable.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket landed on an unmanned platform in the Pacific Ocean after its last launch
Boeing then had to remove more than 1,600 meters of that tape and complete additional testing of the parachutes.
Finally, after a decade of development, NASA and Boeing licensed the vehicle to transport astronauts.
“Not everything will be perfect”
Williams and Wilmore took a measured approach in answering questions about the development problems of the Starliner spacecraft.
“I understand when you say ‘setback,’” Wilmore said during the recent press conference. “But, honestly, with all the discovery (that’s what we would call it) that we had, they were steps forward. It wasn’t a setback, it was moving forward,” he said. “And our families lived that with us.”
Williams added that she is prepared to embark on Monday’s mission with the expectation that small problems may arise.
“We always find things and we will continually find them,” he said Wednesday. “Not everything will be perfect while we fly the spacecraft. And that’s really our goal. “We got to a point, all of us, the big team, got to a point where we feel very confident and comfortable with the way this spacecraft flies, and we have backup procedures in case we need them.”
“We are here,” Williams said, “because we are ready.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
