Now placed on the Atlas 5 rocket, which is scheduled to launch the spacecraft on a crewed test voyage to the International Space Station next month, is Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner.

Early on April 16, the spacecraft left Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center and arrived at Space Launch Complex 41. Later in the day, in the Vertical Integration Facility building there, the spacecraft was raised into position atop the Atlas 5 rocket.

The rollout represents the most recent development toward the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, which is scheduled to launch on May 6th evening at the latest. On board, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will pilot Starliner to the International Space Station. They will spend roughly eight days on the station before boarding Starliner and returning to Earth, where they will land in the southwest of the country.

Originally scheduled for May 1, the launch was postponed due to ISS activities, which included rescheduled departure times for a cargo Dragon vehicle and the relocation of the Crew Dragon spacecraft to make room for Starliner at the forward docking port on the Harmony module.

Nearly two years have passed since the second unmanned test flight, known as OFT-2, successfully docked to the station and made its way down to Earth. This will mark the occasion of the CFT mission. Due to technical issues, the spacecraft on the first unmanned test trip in December 2019 was unable to reach the station and had to return to Earth within a few days.

The primary goal of CFT, according to Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Starliner at Boeing, is to observe how spacecraft systems function with a crew on board. This was said at a briefing on March 22. “We conducted the unmanned OFT-2 mission for the Starliner vehicle, and it turned out to be a great success. We now present mankind.

According to him, the question of “does the vehicle perform with the human in the loop as expected?” accounts for the majority of the flight test objectives. This covers a range of environmental systems, control panels, and the astronauts’ capacity to take manual spacecraft control when necessary.

NASA would be able to certify Starliner for crew rotation missions on a regular basis, beginning with Starliner-1 in early 2025, if the CFT is successful. NASA’s commercial crew program manager, Steve Stich, stated during the March briefing that Starliner-1’s certification had to be finished by November or December in order to stay on time. At the time, he stated, “I think we have a good shot” of meeting that timeline. “We just have to stay on course.”

A flight test readiness review is the next major task for the CFT mission, and it is set for April 25. Williams and Wilmore are also expected to arrive at KSC on the same day in order to complete mission preparations.