NASA’s Third Attempt: Boeing Starliner to Carry Two Astronauts to ISS

5th June 2024- NASA will make another attempt today to launch astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the new Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The previous attempts to send the astronauts on the Starliner’s first crewed flight were aborted due to technical issues. On May 6, a faulty oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket’s second stage halted the mission, while a computer system failure caused a second scrub last Saturday just minutes before liftoff. 

Today’s launch is scheduled for 8:22 pm IST from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. If successful, Wilmore and Williams will spend a day in orbit before docking with the ISS, where they will test the capsule and its subsystems for about a week. This mission marks an important milestone as Boeing’s Starliner aims to become the second reliable human spaceflight option, alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. After completing their mission, the astronauts will return to Earth, marking the first landing of a crewed U.S. spacecraft on land.