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After spending years in its development, Boeing and NASA are ready to fly their Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). Starliner is slated to take off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida tomorrow night. The mission will officially mark the start of Boeing's crewed astronaut missions. The flight will take NASA Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams to the ISS after the United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V rocket lifts off. Tomorrow's launch is a test flight for Starliner, which is the sixth crewed space exploration spacecraft flown by or for NASA in its history.
The Starliner's mission comes as Boeing's preferred launch provider, ULA, upgrades its vehicle portfolio to newer engines with the Vulcan rocket. If the Starliner CFT-1 mission is successful, then NASA and Boeing plan to fly the first operational Starliner mission to the ISS next year.
NASA, Boeing, ULA & Astronauts Are All Ready To Fly Boeing's Starliner Ship To Space
While the Starliner launch is historic for NASA and Boeing, it also marks the first time that the ULA will fly humans to space this millennium. This process involves human rating the Atlas V, since Starliner is designed to fly primarily with ULA's rockets instead of SpaceX's Falcon 9. Starliner's successful docking with the ISS will also grow the portfolio of vehicles that NASA has to work with as it operates the orbiting space laboratory.
Ahead of tomorrow's launch, NASA spent a busy couple of weeks rearranging the ships docked at the station. One of these, the SpaceX Cargo Dragon, returned to Earth last month, after which the SpaceX's second Dragon shifted docking ports.
Along with evaluating Starliner's performance during liftoff, landing, and in space, the ship's crew will also participate in important in-space experiments on the station. These include evaluating the stress of extravehicular activity, or egress from the ISS into space, and the stress of launch and landing portions of the journey on the body.
Apart from the science experiments, Starliner's crew will also evaluate what it's like to live and work in space inside Starliner. NASA's aim with its crewed flights operated by the private sector has always been to have two ships available in case of an in-space emergency. SpaceX's Crew Dragon provided a nice backup to astronauts when the Russian Soyuz developed leaks while in space, and during CFT-1, the crew will perform a "habitability evaluation" to give NASA a "feel" of two additional crew inside Starliner according to NASA's Steve Stich during the Starliner CFT's pre-launch news conference on Friday.
A key change on the Atlas V as part of its human rating is a new system on the Centaur upper stage. This is an emergency detection system that monitors the rocket's systems to provide crucial data to the astronauts in case of an anomaly that requires an in-flight emergency abort. Like SpaceX, ULA will also monitor the rocket through an ascent team which will share data with Boeing and NASA.
As for Boeing, it conducted last minute operations on Starliner yesterday after the ship and its rocket were transported to the launch pad. Final pre-launch operations preparations for Starliner include configuring the cargo so that the crew can enter and populate the ship and evaluating Starliner's power and other systems for habitability. Launch operations will continue until Monday night, with teams ready to meet today as well.
Boeing will decide on what upgrades need to be made on the spacecraft after it evaluates Starliner's CFT performance; with one upgrade piquing NASA's interest involving the ship's landing system. Unlike SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which is designed to land in water to absorb the impact, Starliner lands on land and deploys a parachute system. According to NASA's Steve Stich, his agency is interested in upgrading this system's structure and ensuring that the ship can dock at multiple ports on the ISS.
Starliner is slated to lift off at 10:34 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow, with a backup launch available the day after and on the 10th and 11th. Its crew will spend around a week in space before landing in the Southwestern region of the U.S. An earlier orbital test flight in 2019 saw the ship land in White Sands, New Mexico.
