NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore successfully completed a comprehensive crew exercise simulation, bringing Boeing's "Starliner" spacecraft one step closer to carrying astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time.
NASA Boeing's Crew Flight Test (CFT) is scheduled to launch before mid-April 2024, and Williams and Wilmore will fly to the orbiting laboratory for about two weeks. They will evaluate the Starliner and its systems before returning to the western United States. They will lift off aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida.
The simulation exercise completed Wednesday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is another milestone for the CFT launch. The comprehensive exercise, which involved the crew, NASA, Boeing and ULA, allowed teams to practice pre-launch operations approximately four hours before target liftoff. At the start of the exercise, Wilmore and Williams practiced dress procedures in the astronaut quarters in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Inspection Building at NASA's Kennedy Center.
They then took the elevator down to the first floor, where crew transport vehicles were waiting to take them to the launch pad. The crew and support teams formed a convoy to the launch pad, where Williams and Wilmore supported the operation in the white room, located at the end of the launch tower's crew access arm, which is the access to the spacecraft. The remainder of the exercise included the crew's return to NASA's Kennedy Branch to provide support from Boeing's Mission Control Center.
In the coming weeks, the teams will conduct more simulations for each phase of the mission. Some upcoming milestones include CFT certification, filling the Starliner with propellant, and stacking the Starliner on the Atlas V rocket and rolling it to the launch pad with an orbital facility ready for liftoff.
Starliner completed two uncrewed flight tests: Orbital Flight Test-2 launched from Cape Canaveral and completed its space station mission in May 2022, and Orbital Flight Test-1 provided the team with additional flight data in December 2019. In both unmanned missions, the spacecraft's ability to complete its mission was verified.