Long-awaited Starliner launch breaks a six-decade drought

An Atlas rocket has launched with astronauts aboard for the first time since Gordon Cooper's final Mercury flight in his Faith 7 capsule on 15 May 1963, powered by an Atlas LV-3B 130-D. The Atlas V rocket that launched on 5 June, manufactured by United Launch Alliance and powered at liftoff by a Russian-built RD-180 first-stage engine, carried Boeing's Starliner crew ferry ship to orbit following multiple launch delays over the past several days.

Starliner on top of Atlas rocket launch pad 41

The spacecraft departed from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Pad 41 (a few miles from Cooper’s 1963 launch site) at 10h52 EDT and is considered a ‘shakedown’ flight to the International Space Station. On board are former Navy test pilots Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita Williams, both now active-duty NASA astronauts. Between them, they have four space flights logged, including 500 days in orbit and 11 space walks. Their mission calls for monitoring automated controls during the initial launch, testing manual controls en route, then monitoring the automated 25-hour rendezvous and docking sequence with the International Space Station just past noon on Thursday 6 June (EDT).

On the way to the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams tested out a unique capability of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on orbit, manual piloting. Although the spacecraft is usually autonomous, the crew used the hand controller to point and aim the spacecraft during about two hours of free-flight demonstrations.

“We have also spun out the manual manoeuvring and it is precise, much more so than even the simulator,” said Wilmore, CFT commander. “Stopping exactly on a number you want to stop on, the precision is pretty amazing.”