The American aerospace company Boeing Space succeeded in launching the capsule carrying two astronauts on board, heading to the International Space Station. This is the company's first launch in this type of mission after three years of delay and six failed attempts.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, both retired U.S. Navy captains and former residents of the International Space Station, lifted off aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket on Wednesday at Space Complex-41 in Cabo Canaveral, Florida, at 10:52. (11:52 Argentina time).
This was the first flight by United Launch Alliance since the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo era of the 1960s and 1970s. The rocket is intended to put satellites into orbit and launch other spacecraft, in this case the Starliner capsule.
This time, attention focused on the presence of the two astronauts inside the capsule: the launch took place while Boeing was facing several problems and lawsuits regarding safety issues in its planes, and NASA's confidence was later at stake with every failed take-off attempt.
In 2019, an unmanned flight of the Starliner spacecraft was halted in its initial testing due to a software glitch and had to be repeated before NASA would allow astronauts on board. In 2022 there was progress, but problems arose with the awnings and the presence of flammable tape.
Last Saturday, NASA canceled the launch of the crewed Starliner spacecraft, and ULA's launch team issued a hold command about three minutes and 50 seconds before liftoff.
NASA said the crew aborted the launch attempt because the launch sequencer automatically hung on the ground.
Before this incident, the ship's launch was scheduled for May 6, but it was also suspended due to technical problems.
Willmore and Williams' flight will take 25 hours, so they will arrive at the space station on Thursday. They will remain there for a week to perform tasks in the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth aboard the Starliner ship. The landing is scheduled to take place on June 14 in the desert of the western United States.
Both Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon are designed to be fully autonomous and reusable. On this occasion, the astronauts will take manual control of the ship to check its systems.
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