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Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docks at International Space Station for 1st time
The Starliner spacecraft docked later than planned, but it's a huge milestone for Boeing's astronaut taxi.
The Starliner spacecraft docked later than planned, but it's a huge milestone for Boeing's astronaut taxi.
Boeing's Starliner capsule arrived at the International Space Station Friday night (May 20), notching a huge milestone for the aerospace giant and its quest to fly NASA astronauts to and from orbit.
Starliner lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Thursday evening (May 19), kicking off a crucial uncrewed mission to the station called Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2). About 22 hours later, Starliner began zeroing in on the ISS, performing a series of fly-arounds, approaches and retreats designed to showcase its rendezvous chops.
This orbital dance culminated at 8:28 p.m. EDT (0028 GMT on May 21) today when Starliner finally linked up with the station, docking at the forward-facing port of its Harmony node. The Boeing spacecraft and station were sailing about 270 miles above the South Indian Ocean as they met in orbit.
"Starliner is looking beautiful on the front of the space station," NASA astronaut Robert Hines radioed to Mission Control from the station after docking.
A docking delayed
The docking occurred over an hour later than planned.
NASA and Boeing initially aimed to dock Starliner to the station at 7:10 p.m. EDT (2310 GMT), but held off initially to await better lighting and communications conditions, then delayed it again to reset the space capsule's NASA Docking System, or NDS, when they detected a small anomaly. That reset worked and Starliner linked up smoothly with its docking port.
"The last few hours have been excruciating, you know, seeng that spacecraft just out of reach of [the] ISS," Kathy Lueders, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, told reporters after the docking. "This is a really critical demonstration mission and it was important for us to get that demo data and get the learning from each of the steps along the way, and really put the vehicle through its paces."
Sometimes, Lueders added, "that journey takes a little bit longer," but for now, seeing "that vehicle docked now to the ISS is just phenomenal."
For Steve Stitch, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manger, Starliner's docking success was the ultimate birthday present. He turned 57 today, with the NASA and Boeing teams celebrating with a bit of cake before Starliner reached the space station.
"You know, I've had an incredible 24 hours," Stitch said of watching Starliner launch and finally arrive at the space station, even if it docked more than an hour late. "I had to wait a little longer for my birthday present. It was worth the wait."
Starliner's long road to ISS
It was a monumental moment for Boeing, which signed a multibillion-dollar NASA contract in 2014 to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS using Starliner. Today's docking showed that the capsule can indeed make its way to the orbiting lab — something it failed to do once before.
"It was really something to watch," Mark Nappi, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the company's Commercial Crew Program, said in a post-docking press teleconference. "It was really nail-biting watching that vehicle sit out there for a little while until it was time to come in."
The original OFT, which launched in December 2019, ended prematurely after Starliner suffered a series of software glitches and got stranded in an orbit too low to allow an ISS rendezvous. And OFT-2 was originally supposed to lift off last summer, but prelaunch checks revealed that 13 of the 24 oxidizer valves in Starliner's propulsion system were stuck. It took about eight months to identify the cause of the problem and remedy it.
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