The Boeing Starliner is ready to launch a NASA crew into space
The Boeing/NASA Joint Launch of Starliners: A New chapter of bringing more people to space, in the light of recent NASA-Jet crashes
The launch of the Starliners has been a long time coming. With this highly anticipated liftoff, Boeing will officially be the second company (after SpaceX) to partner with NASA to carry humans into space. The Starliner will be crewed by NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who will head to the International Space Station. The plan is for the astronauts to remain there for a week or so, then return to planet Earth, reentering the atmosphere aboard the same craft and then landing under parachutes.
“Having two different US-crewed vehicles is really important for us,” said NASA’s Dana Weigel, program manager for the ISS, in a news conference on May 3. “This crewed flight test is a critical stepping stone to reaching that broader goal.”
The goal of outsourcing missions to the ISS was to allow NASA to focus on its broader goals of returning humans to the moon (which it hopes to do by 2026 as part of its Artemis program) and eventually to Mars. Daniel Dumbacher, the chief executive officer of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said that the idea was to get to a point where NASA could think about the future beyond the space station.
As part of the program that got it $2.6 billion, it was promised that it would fulfill its side of the bargain. Crew Dragon launched its first humans to space for NASA in 2020, and since then, it’s carried nearly 50 people into space, including a US billionaire. The path of Boeing’s Starliners was more difficult than it initially appeared.
If this mission succeeds, it will be a good sign for the troubled aviation company. Boeing has drawn a lot of presumably unwanted attention in recent months, as an array of technical malfunctions on its commercial airline flights have terrified travelers and made headlines. After two Boeing jets crashed within weeks of each other, there are a number of events happening. Clearly, Boeing is eager to claw back some public goodwill and write a whole new chapter centered around a future of bringing more people into space.
The launch is a jointly planned event between Boeing and NASA, and is scheduled for Monday, May 6, at 10:34 pm EDT, 7:34 PDT. You can listen to the launch on the live stream. It will be visible on NASA+, the agency’s subscription service, and on NASA’s official website. The NASA app has a mobile version of the stream. You can also watch it right here.
