When Sonny Williams was assigned to fly a Boeing Starliner flight in 2018, no one expected the launch to take six years.
The veteran NASA astronaut and former U.S. Navy test pilot spoke March 22 about the “emotional rollercoaster” the Starliner team has been through in the years since, with two unmanned test flights, the pandemic and a host of other technical issues that have… They must be addressed before astronauts can be safely launched.
Their years of work, though intense, had been a “dream of a test pilot” and were finally coming to fruition. Williams and Commander Butch Wilmore are now expected to embark on a 10-day crew test flight no later than May 6. “I don’t think I’d really want to be anywhere else right now,” Williams added.
In fact, Wilmore and Williams were initially assigned to the six-month operational Starliner-1 mission that is scheduled to fly after the CFT. Several other crew swaps have also occurred in the intervening years, but everyone has always had confidence in Starliner: “It’s a solid spacecraft,” Williams told reporters at a news conference here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
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Boeing and Space were tasked in 2014 with bringing NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a commercial spacecraft. SpaceX has been doing this operationally since 2020, while Starliner has had to wait to address several technical issues. (Boeing, NASA, and the astronauts all confirm that related issues were addressed before launch day.)
While the spacecraft is certified for a test flight for astronauts, the work is far from over. The CFT is a developmental mission, former Navy test pilot Wilmore confirmed at the same press conference. This means that the astronauts, their support teams and even the Starliner-1 crew (now expected to launch in 2025) are creating the training program as they go. The spacecraft also continues to change, albeit slightly.
“We’re kind of the pioneers, if you will, in setting up and developing these training processes,” Williams told reporters. This mindset, he said soon after, requires looking beyond the “finish line” or setting firm dates for any major milestone in the mission.
“We’ve trained for flight tests, and God willing, we’re now in a position to test spaceflight — something not many people have had the opportunity to do,” Williams said. “We take that very seriously.” “So we look at the tasks at hand, the ones that are close or that we are dealing with at the time, (while) also always looking at the long-term mission. So the finish line is not something I focus on.”
Related: Boeing begins fueling the Starliner capsule before launching the first astronaut
Williams said the additional years of training gave her confidence that Boeing and NASA had looked into the small details of their shakedown mission, including adding numerous backups to procedures and systems.
For example, a spacecraft can perform all major actions without any communications. The astronauts can also take over any robotic system during docking or landing to point the Starliner in the right direction, and the team is well-trained in launch aborts and other critical actions.
“I feel like we’ve invested time” since the first failed uncrewed flight test of the Starliner to reach the International Space Station in 2019, Williams said; After all, Starliner got there on its second attempt in 2022. She said later at the conference that the team was “very smart” because “we went through this process together.”
“We really looked into the spacecraft, looked at everything we could know about it, and made some changes to things that we thought needed changes,” she added. “That’s why I think we’re ready to go, because we’ve been part of… that development process. It’s not quite done, and we’ve noticed that, and we’ve worked to make sure it’s done now. Ready.”
With his years of training over, Wilmore said he allows himself to reflect on the emotions of launch day. “I’m looking forward to walking onto the pad and launching,” he said, adding: “It’s a great seat to be in.”
Williams added that she wants to push herself about the prospect of making her first spaceflight in more than a dozen years, since launching aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2012. (Wilmore’s last flight was almost as long ago, in 2015.) CFT So far, she said going into quarantine will make it seem more real.
“It seems like that’s what happens, and then it’s all icing on the cake. By then, it’s almost all over,” Williams said of quarantine. After launch, there’s also a familiar sight to look forward to: “I really can’t wait until we see the space station through the window. That will be so cool.”
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