Boeing’s Starliner mission successfully launched its first manned test flight this Wednesday, a milestone that has been in development for a decade and which has already had two frustrated attempts.
The new maiden voyage of the spacecraft with humans on board took off at 11:52 (Argentine time) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, mounted on an Atlas V rocket. The historic event was broadcast live on site NASA website.
The mission, called Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing’s efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States’ options for transporting astronauts to the space station under the Space Program. NASA Commercial Crew. The federal agency’s initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.
If successful, Starliner will become the sixth type of American-built spacecraft to carry NASA astronauts, following the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the Space Shuttle from 1981 to 2011 and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon starting in 2020.
Problems have followed Boeing for several months now. On May 6, it also had to suspend its launch 4 hours before, due to an anomaly in an oxygen relief valve in the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V. (DIB)
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