The Starliner spacecraft has officially separated from the Atlas V rocket and is firing its own engines.
Williams and Wilmore are now expected to spend more than 24 hours traveling to the International Space Station, with docking anticipated to occur at 12:15 p.m. ET on Thursday.
The Starliner spacecraft has officially reached orbit.
Now, Williams and Wilmore have their tablets out and are preparing for the first in a series of burns that will set Starliner on its way to the International Space Station.
The Starliner spacecraft just experienced its first orbital insertion burn.
This maneuver takes Starliner out of its slightly suborbital trajectory and puts it at an altitude that will allow the spacecraft to catch up with the space station for a rendezvous later tomorrow.
(here’s hoping for a successful alternative to some otherwise rather musky options)
SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk, whose company is a director competitor of Boeing’s, offered his congrats on X as well.
Wow. The first crewed flight was initially planned for way back in 2017, so after all these delays it really started to feel like it was never going to happen. Must be a huge relief for all the folks who’ve been working on this project for the last 15 years or so. (Or it will be, if the mission is successful.)
“So you want a spaceship built by the company run by the fascist child who brought us the Cybertruck or a spaceship built by the company whose airplanes keep falling apart and whose whistleblowers keep dying?”
Dang. How is it that the only other option to get to the ISS is a spaceship built by an autocratic government that’s currently engaged in a bloody land war against a neighboring democracy? (And lately tends to build leaky spacecraft to boot)
Is Leaky Starliner Stuck at the ISS? Boeing and NASA Say No Despite Yet Another Delay
[…]
Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of the Commercial Crew Program at Boeing, said during the press briefing. “So here we are, we’ve learned that our helium system is not performing as designed, albeit manageable, it’s still not working like we had designed it, so we got to go figure that out.”
[…]
NASA’s Stich reiterated that the Starliner teams also learned that the vehicle’s service module is “a very complicated module.”
[…]
Starliner can stay docked to the ISS for a maximum of 45 days during its current mission.
[…]
So they can stay for roundabout another four weeks. No need to hurry, then.
