If you want to know what it’s like to test a new spacecraft in orbit for the first time, there are only three people you can call in the Western world.
This fact should make us keenly aware of the rarity of a new human-rated spacecraft making its debut. That group of three will grow to five when Boeing’s Starliner capsule takes off Monday night. Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both former U.S. Navy test pilots, were in charge of the Starliner controls and flew below Earth atop the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. It’s scheduled to go into orbit.
“The first crewed flight of a new spacecraft is a critical milestone,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Freeh. “The lives of our crew members, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, are at risk. We do not take that lightly.”
Launch is set for 10:34 PM EDT (02:34 UTC), with NASA TV coverage beginning at 6:30 PM EDT. You can watch it below.
After launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Wilmore and Williams monitored Starliner’s systems and used manual controls for several maneuver tests as the spacecraft autonomously approached the International Space Station. I will take over. Assuming the launch takes place Monday night, docking at the space station is scheduled for early Wednesday morning. Starliner will remain in orbit for at least eight days, with the earliest opportunity to undock and land set for May 15.
“It’s a test pilot’s dream and we’re working on it from start to finish,” Wilmore said.
If you start the clock on the day Boeing announced its Starliner program in 2010, this moment is almost a decade behind the company’s original schedule.
“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster emotionally, because things were looking up, or it looks like we’re taking a few steps back, and then we’re taking a few steps forward,” Williams said. said. “We’re at that point now. We knew we would get here eventually. It’s a solid spacecraft.”
test pilot’s dream
Wilmore, 61, is from Tennessee. As the captain of the Boeing test flight, he will sit in the left seat of the Starliner’s cockpit. Williams, 58, grew up in Massachusetts and will serve as a Starliner pilot. Both astronauts have flown into space twice before, launching and landing on the Space Shuttle and Russia’s Soyuz capsule.
They will join a small club of astronaut test pilots who have hands-on experience piloting new spacecraft in orbit for the first time. Astronauts Doug Hurley, Bob Behnken, and Bob Crippen are the only three living Americans who can make such a claim. Hurley and Behnken flew the first astronaut missions aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, and Crippen piloted the first space shuttle mission in 1981 with Captain John Young, who died in 2018. Yang Liwei, the first astronaut aboard China’s Shenzhou spacecraft in 2003, slips out of the Global Club during a tour.
Als spoke with Hurley, Behnken and Crippen in the days before the first manned flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
“It’s a unique opportunity to fly a brand new spacecraft, and it’s amazing,” Hurley said. “Such people rarely come.”
Hurley and Behnken retired from NASA’s astronaut corps after the 2020 mission and now work for Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Crippen, now 86, retired from the agency in 1995 after serving as director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This will be the first time humans will be aboard a Starliner, and the first time a crew will be launched aboard an Atlas V rocket. All of his 99 previous Atlas V flights have either launched satellites or deployed NASA probes into deep space. Hurley and Behnken’s 2020 flight with SpaceX was the 85th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket.
Crippen’s experience was much different.The Space Shuttle was never launched without people on board, and its first flight was ColumbiaThe mission, known as STS-1, may have been the most dangerous mission ever undertaken by NASA. In retrospect, NASA officials calculated that there was a 1 in 12 chance that a catastrophic failure of the STS-1 mission would have killed the crew.
“Butch and Suni would ascend aboard the Atlas V, a very reliable booster, while John and I had a completely experimental spacecraft,” Crippen said. “They are both very experienced astronauts and are well qualified to do this.”
A few months ago, Crippen met with Starliner crew members at the Florida Space Center and had the opportunity to see the Starliner spacecraft up close. “It reminded me a lot of the Apollo command module,” he said.
Starliner’s first crew has been training together for almost four years. Wilmore replaced the original mission commander in 2020, and Williams has been assigned to Boeing’s commercial crew program since 2018.
“My advice is to learn as much as you can about the spacecraft,” Crippen said. “I think they’re well prepared. They’ve put in a lot of time…even though there have been delays.”
