Written by Joey Rowlett and Steve Gorman
(Reuters) – Boeing Co.'s new Starliner capsule and NASA's inaugural two-member crew safely docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, in a key test to prove the ship's airworthiness and increase Boeing's (NYSE:) competition with Elon Musk. SpaceX.
The rendezvous was achieved despite several jet thrusters losing guidance control, some due to a helium thrust leak, which NASA and Boeing said should not affect the mission.
The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, carrying veteran astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Sonny” Williams, arrived at the orbital pad after a flight that lasted about 27 hours after its launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The reusable, gumdrop-shaped capsule, dubbed “Calypso” by its crew, was launched into space Wednesday aboard an Atlas (NYSE:) V rocket outfitted and flown by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.
It docked independently with the International Space Station while both were orbiting about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the southern Indian Ocean at 1:34 p.m. EDT (1734 GMT), as the two spacecraft flew around the world side by side on… An altitude of about 17,500 miles (28,160 km). ) per hour.
The spacecraft's final approach to the ISS and docking, after a short period when Wilmore manually controlled the capsule, was shown in a NASA webcast.
“It's good to be connected to the big city in the sky,” Wilmore radioed to mission control in Houston shortly after docking.
Upon their arrival, Willmore (58 years old) and Williams (61 years old) spent about two hours performing a series of standard procedures, such as checking airlock leaks and pressure of the corridor between the capsule and the International Space Station, before opening the entry hatches.
A live NASA video feed showed the smiling new arrivals, dressed in blue flight suits, floating weightlessly on their heads down the padded walkway, one by one, into the station. Williams was first.
“We are as happy as can be to get into space,” she said during a brief welcome ceremony shortly afterwards.
They were warmly welcomed with hugs and handshakes by the seven crew members currently residing on the station: four American astronauts and three Russian astronauts.
Plans call for Willmore and Williams to remain aboard the station for about eight days, then depart on a return flight that will take the Starliner on a fiery return journey through Earth's atmosphere and end with a parachute and airbag landing in the desert of the southwestern United States. For the first time on a NASA manned mission.
Thursday was a big day for the US space program, as SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket survived a fiery hypersonic reentry from space and made a spectacular landing in the Indian Ocean on its fourth test flight.
During the Starliner's flight to the International Space Station, helium leaks were discovered in its propulsion system, disabling some of the 28 thrusters the capsule uses to perform precise maneuvers in space. However, the spacecraft still has enough working thrusters to make up for the loss, according to NASA and Boeing. An additional thrust engine was disabled by Mission Control just before final approach.
Years of technical problems
Wednesday's Starliner launch came after years of technical problems, various delays and the first successful test mission in 2022 to the orbiting laboratory without astronauts on board.
Last-minute glitches led to the cancellation of the Starliner's first two crew launch attempts, including a helium leak discovered in the capsule's propulsion system that officials later determined was not serious enough to warrant a mechanical repair.
NASA and Boeing officials at the time cited a defect in a seal on a propulsion component that failed to keep helium inside.
Boeing built the Starliner under a NASA contract to compete with SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, which since 2020 has become the US space agency's only vehicle to send ISS crew members into orbit from American soil. The current mission marks the first Starliner test flight with astronauts on board, a requirement before NASA can certify the capsule for routine astronaut missions.
The crew for the pivotal flight was selected by two NASA veterans who had previously logged 500 days in space between them: Wilmore, 61, a retired Navy captain and fighter pilot, and Williams, 58, a former Navy helicopter test pilot with aviation experience. More than 30 different planes.
Getting the Starliner to this point has been an arduous process for Boeing under its $4.2 billion fixed-price contract with NASA, which wants to cancel two different American missions to the International Space Station.
Starliner was several years behind schedule and more than $1.5 billion over budget. Meanwhile, Boeing's commercial aircraft manufacturing operations were hit by a series of crises that included its 737 MAX aircraft.
