Boeing's new Starliner set on Earth

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Boeing's new crew capsule Starliner sank a rendezvous with the International Space Station ISS on Friday after launching successfully on a highly anticipated do-over test flight without astronauts aboard.

The CST-100 Starliner was due to arrive in the space station at about 7: 10 p.m. EDT 2310 GMT for docking with the Orbital Research Outpost 24 hours after liftoff from the Cape Canaveral U.S. Space Force Base in Florida.

The capsule was lifted to orbit atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance ULA Starliner and reached its intended preliminary orbit 31 minutes later despite the failure of two onboard thrusters.

After Boeing engineers convened with NASA officials on Friday to greenlight Starliner's approach to the station, the company said the two failed thrusters posed no risk to the rest of the spaceflight.

Boeing said it was monitoring some unexpected behavior detected with Starliner's thermal-control system, but that the capsule's temperatures remained stable.

The learning process for operating a Starliner in space is part of the process, according to a mission commentator Steve Siceloff, who spokeswoman for Boeing's mission.

After an ill-fated first test flight in late 2019 nearly ended with the vehicle's loss due to a software glitch that prevented the spacecraft's ability to reach the space station, much is riding on the success of the mission.

A second attempt to launch the capsule last summer resulted in problems with Starliner's propulsion system, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Starliner was grounded for another nine months while the two companies sparred over what caused fuel valves to shut and which firm was responsible for fixing them, as reported last week.

Boeing plans to redesign the aircraft after this week's flight, after fixing the issue with a temporary workaround.

A success is seen as a key to Boeing as the company struggles to climb out of a series of crises in its space-defense unit and its jetliner business. The Starliner program alone has cost nearly $600 million in engineering setbacks since the 2019 mishap.

If all goes well with the current mission, Starliner could send its first team of astronauts to the space station as early as the fall.

The only passenger was a research mannequin, whimsically named Rosie the Rocketeer and dressed in a blue flight suit, to collect data on crew cabin conditions during the journey, plus 800 pounds 227 kg of cargo to deliver to the space station.

The research platform is currently home to a seven-member crew, three NASA astronauts, a European Space Agency astronaut from Italy and three Russian cosmonauts.

A successful mission will bring the long-delayed Starliner a major step closer to providing NASA with a second reliable means of transporting astronauts to and from the space station.

The U.S. space agency has had to rely solely on the Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules from Elon Musk's SpaceX to fly astronauts since the resumption of crew flights from American soil in 2020, nine years after the space shuttle program ended.

The only other option to reach the orbital laboratory was by hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.