NASA, Boeing, and United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, are now targeting no earlier than 4:43 p.m. EDT on Tuesday for the next launch attempt of the crewed flight test (CFT) of Starliner: Boeing’s semireusable vessel to the International Space Station (ISS).
The approximately weeklong mission—which will take NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS and back—is intended to be Starliner’s final test flight before NASA certifies it for Commercial Crew rotation missions to the orbital laboratory. It would be the first crewed launch on ULA’s Atlas V rocket, which will send the spacecraft into orbit, and the first on the Atlas family of rockets in more than half a century.
