The astronauts of the POT of Boeing’s first manned mission, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, arrived this Thursday in Florida in good spirits ahead of the final preparations for the trip, whose takeoff towards the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for May 6 .
“We are ready, the ship is ready and the equipment is ready,” Wilmore stated during a meeting with the media immediately after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center (USA). piloting T-38 jets, coming from Houston (Texas).
Both astronauts will travel aboard a Starliner ship, manufactured by Boeing, which It will be launched by an Atlas V rocket, of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) consortium.
You can read: Scientists say they have discovered the date when the Sun will explode: will it be soon?
like his own Wilmore He recalled this Thursday during the press conference, the CFT is a test mission and as such, it will not be exempt from findings about the operation of the ship, of which, however, they were completely confident.
“We wouldn’t be here if the spacecraft weren’t safe,” Wilmore said, adding that while NASA makes space travel seem easy, it’s actually “quite difficult.”
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 left before takeoff, which was scheduled for July 21.
Read also: NASA flyby reveals a lava lake on Jupiter’s Moon
The Starliner and its two crew members, veteran pilots of the US Armed Forces who have already traveled to the ISS twice each, will remain in the orbital laboratory for a week until their return, which will be in the southwest of the US and with the help of the ship’s improved parachute system.
If the mission is successful, the CST-100 Starliner ship will obtain the necessary certifications from the US space agency to begin providing cargo and crew transportation services to the ISS.
More news: Fossils of a turtle that lived about 57 million years ago are discovered in Boyacá
Boeing successfully launched the OFT 2 unmanned mission on May 19, 2022, which the next day successfully docked at the ISS, where the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft remained for four days before separating and then land in New Mexico (USA).
The capsule, 5 meters high and 4.6 meters in diameter, is reusable (with a limit of 10 uses) and has capacity for up to 7 people, although the manned missions commissioned by NASA for this program usually have 4 or 5 passengers.
