Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

NASA reveals target date for first crewed Starliner flight

Trevor Mogg
By
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Boeing / Boeing

NASA and Boeing are making the final preparations for the long-awaited and much-delayed maiden crewed flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.

A message posted on NASA’s website on Monday said the launch team is targeting “no earlier than Monday, May 6” for liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Recommended Videos

Flying on board the Starliner will be NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. The pair will head to the International Space Station (ISS) and spend about 10 days there, living and working alongside the orbital outpost’s other crewmembers.

Related

While the Starliner project has faced many technical issues and subsequent delays since 2019, the most recent target date for launch has been determined to a large extent by ISS operations, with the time around now particularly busy for spacecraft comings and goings. Ahead of Starliner’s launch, for example, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 crewmembers will board the Dragon spacecraft and relocate it to another ISS port to make way for the incoming Starliner.

Boeing, which built the Starliner, is also performing prelaunch closeout work and completing final certification for flight.

The first crewed flight test of Starliner will help NASA verify whether the spacecraft system is ready to fly regular crew rotation missions to the space station. Up to now, the Starliner has been on an uncrewed test flight that failed to reach the ISS and another that managed to dock with the ISS before returning home safely.

The Starliner project is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and the aim is for the spacecraft to provide NASA with another human transportation system alongside SpaceX’s spaceflight system, which has been using the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS since 2020.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA delays first crewed Artemis missions to the moon
An illustration showing astronauts on the moon.

NASA has delayed its plan to send four astronauts on a flyby of the moon in the Artemis II mission in November, announcing that it will now take place no earlier than September 2025.

In the same announcement made on Tuesday, NASA chief Bill Nelson said that the first crewed landing, originally planned for 2025 as part of Artemis III, will now launch in September 2026 at the earliest.

Read more
NASA reveals a new target date for first crewed Starliner flight
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft at the space station during an uncrewed test flight.

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft could launch on its first crewed flight to the International Space Station in April next year, NASA has revealed.

However, that’s merely a target date and so we’ll have to continue to wait for official confirmation of a detailed launch schedule.

Read more
NASA’s moon crew enjoys first close encounter with their Orion spaceship
Artemis II crew members, shown inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, check out their Orion crew module on August 8, 2023.

The four astronauts embarking on a mission to the moon next year have had their first good look at the Orion capsule that will take them there.

NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, got up close and personal with the Orion spacecraft during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center from where the moon-bound Artemis II mission is currently scheduled to launch in November 2024.

Read more