Two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, opened the hatch of the spacecraft and boarded the outpost in orbit.
There were glitches with its propulsion system, but Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and the two NASA astronauts it carried successfully docked at the International Space Station on Thursday afternoon.
The docking, at 1:34 p.m. Eastern time, was more than an hour later than planned, after the troubleshooting of several malfunctioning thrusters.
Docking confirmed!@BoeingSpace‘s #Starliner docked to the forward-facing port of the @Space_Station‘s Harmony module at 1:34pm ET (1734 UTC). @NASA_Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will soon make their way into the orbital laboratory, where they’ll spend about a week. pic.twitter.com/BtcXA4Vq4t
— NASA (@NASA) June 6, 2024
The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will spend at least a week at the space station.
Starliner’s arrival came one day after the vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The docking was a major milestone for the test flight, which is to provide a final check that Starliner is ready to begin once-a-year operational flights to ferry NASA crews for six-month stays at the space station.
NASA hired Boeing to build the spacecraft as one of a pair of replacements for its retired space shuttles, but the company experienced years of costly technical problems and delays that kept it from flying Starliner with people on board.