2024-04-25 21:24:39
Miami, April 25 (EFE).- NASA astronauts from Boeing’s first manned mission, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, arrived in Florida this Thursday in good spirits ahead of the final preparations for the trip, whose start towards the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for May 6.
“We are ready, the ship is ready and the equipment is ready,” Wilmore said during a meeting with the media immediately after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center (USA) piloting T-38 jets from Houston (Texas).
The CFT mission will lift off at 22:34 on May 6 (02:34 GMT on May 7) from a platform at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Both astronauts will travel aboard a Starliner spacecraft, manufactured by Boeing, which will be launched by an Atlas V rocket, from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) consortium.
As Wilmore himself recalled today during the press conference, the CFT is a test mission and as such it will not be free of discoveries about the operation of the ship, of which they were however absolutely sure.
“We wouldn’t be here if the spacecraft wasn’t safe,” said Wilmore, who added that while NASA makes space travel seem easy, it’s actually “pretty hard.”
Last year, problems were discovered in the parachute system and in some fiberglass ribbons which forced the mission to be postponed when there was a month and a half left before departure, which was scheduled for 21 July.
The Starliner and its two crew members, veteran U.S. military pilots who have already traveled to the ISS twice each, will remain in the orbital laboratory for a week until their return, which will be in the southwestern United States and with the help of the ship’s improved parachute system.
If the mission is successful, the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will receive the necessary certifications from the US space agency to begin providing cargo and crew transport services to the space station.
Boeing successfully launched the OFT 2 unmanned mission on 19 May 2022, which the next day docked at the ISS, where the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft remained for four days before separating and then landing in New Mexico (USA).
The capsule, 5 meters tall and 4.6 meters in diameter, is reusable (with a limit of ten uses) and has capacity for up to seven people, although the crewed missions ordered by NASA for this program are usually four or five passengers.
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