Boeing
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is making its first flight to space. This marks a major step in efforts for the US to start sending astronauts to orbit on its own again – since the Space Shuttle programme ended in 2011, the only nations capable of this were Russia and China, so NASA has been buying rides from Russia for its astronauts. That’s about to change.
Starliner is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard an Atlas V rocket on 20 December from Cape Canaveral in Florida. During this test flight, the craft will not have any human passengers. It will carry food and equipment along with a test dummy nicknamed Rosie the Astronaut, but this is the last trial before it can start shuttling astronauts into space in early 2020.
“The ability for American companies to send American astronauts to the ISS is a long time coming,” says space consultant Laura Forczyk. “It also marks a transition between NASA launching its astronauts on its own vehicle to NASA purchasing services from private companies.”
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SpaceX is also working on a similar capsule called Crew Dragon, which flew to the ISS for the first time in March 2019. It suffered a setback a month later when a capsule exploded during testing, but a repeat of that test in November 2019 went smoothly. Its first flight with astronauts aboard is also planned for early 2020. It is not yet clear whether Boeing or SpaceX will fly passengers in their crafts first.
When SpaceX and Starliner are both operational, NASA will return to the space flight capabilities that it lost in 2011 with the retirement of the Space Shuttle. Forczyk says this is a big deal for the US, and it will jumpstart the country’s renewed commitment to human space flight.
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