More than two years since its last attempt, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is heading for the International Space Station.
The uncrewed capsule launched atop …
More than two years since its last attempt, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is heading for the International Space Station. The uncrewed capsule launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 3:54 p.m. PT Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. If all goes as planned, it will autonomously dock with the ISS about 24 hours later on Friday. The astronauts living on the station will then open the hatch to Starliner on Saturday and unload the shipment of food and other cargo inside. The mission is referred to as Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) because Starliner’s first attempt at an OFT in 2019 saw the conical craft fail to reach the ISS due to a software glitch. The vehicle did manage to land back on Earth, but it was later revealed by a NASA safety advisory panel that a second software problem was corrected in midflight that had “the potential for catastrophic spacecraft failure.”
Starliner’s problems continued after Boeing worked to address 80 recommendations NASA made following an investigation of what happened during the first OFT. It rolled Starliner out to the launch pad in August of last year, but technical problems scrubbed the launch, and the vehicle had to be pulled back inside for inspection.
