Washington
The ‘Starliner’ spacecraft, piloted by Indian-origin Sunita Williams, is scheduled to launch into space on Saturday, following previous setbacks in the joint mission of US space agency NASA and aircraft major Boeing. This mission will mark Williams’ third space journey. According to NASA, the flight to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) is set to lift off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre around 10 pm Indian Standard Time today. Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore will be the first humans to board the Starliner spacecraft as part of the US space agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Starliner spacecraft will be propelled into space on an Atlas 5 rocket of the rocket company United Launch Alliance (ULA). It is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Sunday, where the astronauts will conduct a range of tests for about a week. Starliner will then undock from the ISS, re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, and make a parachute and airbag-assisted landing in the southwestern United States on June 10, as stated by NASA. If successful, NASA will begin the final process of certifying Starliner and its systems for crewed rotation missions to the International Space Station.
The Starliner capsule is designed to carry four astronauts, or a mix of crew and cargo, for NASA missions to low Earth orbit. Both Williams and Wilmore remained in preflight quarantine following their return to the Florida spaceport on May 28. Mission managers had called off the previous Crewed Test Flight (CFT) mission due to technical issues but have since resolved them.
