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Astronauts of the first Starliner complete dress rehearsal before launch on May 6
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have completed a major dress rehearsal before their historic launch on Boeing Starliner no earlier than May 6, agency officials announced Friday, April 26, hours after the rehearsal ended. .
“Wilmore and Williams completed a series of steps on launch day, including suiting up, working in a cockpit simulator, and using the same software that will be used during launch,” NASA officials wrote in a blog post Friday April 26.
The rehearsal took place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Florida, and included a countdown procedure with the Starliner spacecraft, which sits atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket that will transport it to the International Space Station (ISS).
The week-long crewed flight test successfully completed its final flight readiness review with NASA on Thursday, April 25. CFT, the first Starliner mission with astronauts, aims to certify the spacecraft for six-month missions to the ISS that could begin as early as 2025. Read more about the Starliner launch here on Space.com.
Starliner astronauts arrive at launch site
The two NASA astronauts who will fly aboard Boeing’s first crewed Starliner spacecraft have arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare for their historic launch to the International Space Station on May 6.
Boeing Starliner crew flight test commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams landed their NASA T-38 supersonic aircraft at the space center’s Launch and Landing Center after a short flight from Ellington Field in Houston, near the Johnson Space Center.
The astronauts will launch to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner and an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Station near KSC. Their week-long mission to the ISS is a final test cruise for Boeing’s Starliner to prove it is ready for operational NASA crew flights. At the end of the mission, Starliner will parachute to Earth and make a land landing in the southwest United States.
