On Monday, a brand-new spacecraft called the Boeing Starliner is scheduled to carry Indian-origin astronaut Captain Sunita Williams and her fellow seasoned NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore into the International Space Station (ISS).
This will be the first crewed test flight of Starliner, and the pair will launch into space from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Should the flight succeed, it will make history as the second private company to be able to transport crew members to and from the ISS.
The launch is planned for Monday, May 6, at 10.34 p.m. EDT, or 8.04 a.m. Indian Standard Time.
In 2020, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a rival to Boeing, successfully completed a crew flight test. Since 2020, 12 crewed missions have been sent to the ISS. In May 2022, Starliner completed a successful second unmanned test flight following an unsuccessful attempt in December 2019.
The flight, which Boeing is referring to as its Crew Flight Test (CFT), will be piloted by Wilmore and Williams, 59, a retired US Navy captain. It will be docked with the ISS for approximately a week. The two astronauts will live and work on the International Space Station (ISS) for eight days before undocking and returning to Earth on May 15 after an approximately 26-hour Starliner flight to the ISS.
Williams, a native of Needham, Massachusetts, graduated from the US Naval Academy with a degree in physical science and the Florida Institute of Technology with a master’s in engineering management.
According to NASA, she launched on space shuttle Discovery’s STS-116 mission to reach the International Station for her first spaceflight, Expedition 14/15, which took place between December 2006 and June 2007.
Williams completed four spacewalks while on board, setting a record for women at the time. On June 22, 2007, she brought the shuttle Atlantis back to Earth on its STS-117 flight, landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, capping her tour of duty.
