A pair of NASA test pilots blasted off aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the International Space Station, the first to fly the new spacecraft.
The trip by Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was expected to take 25 hours, with an arrival Thursday. They will spend just over a week at the orbiting lab before climbing back into Starliner for a remote desert touchdown in the western U.S. on June 14.
“Let’s get going!” Wilmore called out a few minutes before liftoff.
Half an hour later, he and Williams were safely in orbit and giving chase to the space station. Back at Cape Canaveral, the relieved launch controllers stood and applauded. After all the trouble leading up to Wednesday’s launch, including two scrapped countdowns, everything went smoothly before and during liftoff, prompting congratulations from SpaceX’s Elon Musk and others.
Source: https://apnews.com
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