Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams pilots NASA’s Boeing Starliner to ISS on historic test flight

Indian-American astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams embarked on her third space mission on Wednesday, piloting a spacecraft from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida. She was accompanied by fellow NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore, heading toward the International Space Station (ISS). The test flight had faced multiple delays.

“Let's go, Calypso,” was the message Sunita radioed to mission control minutes before liftoff, referring to the name of the Boeing's Starliner capsule—“Take us to space and back.”

Starliner is scheduled to reach the ISS today at around 9:45 pm Indian Standard Time (12:15 PM ET).

Sunita's mother, Bonnie Pandya, told NBC News hours before liftoff that her daughter was in good spirits and was “so happy about going.”

NASA said in an update on Thursday morning that both Sunita and Butch Wilmore are hard at work performing initial tests on the Starliner spacecraft in orbit.

“The first six hours have been absolutely fascinating,” Butch, who took manual control of the spacecraft, told the mission center at NASA's center in Houston.

NASA confirmed that at 10:52 am ET, Boeing's Starliner lifted off on a ULA Launch Atlas V rocket for the first time. The mission, dubbed the Crew Flight Test, aims to certify the spacecraft for routine space travel to and from the International Space Station.

Sunita Williams, 58, has made history by becoming the first female astronaut to fly on the inaugural flight of a crewed spacecraft. This flight also marks her third journey into space.

Starliner's success will determine if the spacecraft will be certified to fly six-month astronaut missions to and from the ISS for NASA, a service already provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Upon their safe arrival at the space station, Wilmore and Williams will join the Expedition 71 crew, which includes NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matt Dominick, Tracy C Dyson, and Jeanette Epps, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.

“Two bold NASA astronauts are well on their way on this historic first test flight of a brand-new spacecraft,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson after the Starliner launch.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk congratulated Boeing on the successful launch of its Starliner craft to space.

“Congratulations on a successful launch!” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via X today. He also reposted the US space agency's post, that read “Starliner to the stars!”

During a 2013 press conference at the National Science Centre in New Delhi, Sunita told reporters that she carries a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and samosas with her during her space missions.

Both Suni and Butch will remain at the ISS for about a week before undocking and re-entering Earth's atmosphere. NASA said that the spacecraft will make a parachute and airbag-assisted landing in the southwestern United States on June 10.

After the successful liftoff on Wednesday night, NASA chief Bill Nelson described the event as a “special moment” during a post-launch press conference. “It's another one of those great markers in history,” he said.

“Today's launch is a milestone achievement for the future of spaceflight,” Nelson posted on X, adding, “Butch and Suni--safe travels through the stars. See you back home.”

In 2014, both Boeing and SpaceX received funding from NASA's Commercial Crew programme to carry astronauts to the ISS after the US space agency retired its Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

Boeing received over USD 4 billion in US federal funds to develop the Starliner, while SpaceX received about USD 2.6 billion.

Since its first launch on May 30, 2020, SpaceX's Crew Dragon has performed 12 crewed missions to the ISS.

Before Wednesday's launch, the last attempt to launch Boeing's Starliner spacecraft was scrubbed on Saturday, less than four minutes before blastoff from the Kennedy Space Centre, due to a ground system computer triggering an automatic abort command that shut down the launch sequence.

On May 6, NASA, Boeing, and ULA “scrubbed” the launch due to a “suspect oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket's Centaur second stage.”

Sunita, from Needham, Massachusetts, earned a physical science degree from the US Naval Academy and a master's in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology. Her first spaceflight was Expedition 14/15 (from December 2006 to June 2007), launching on space shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission to reach the International Space Station, according to NASA.

While onboard, Sunita established a world record for women at the time with four spacewalks. She concluded her tour of duty by returning to Earth with shuttle Atlantis' STS-117 flight, landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on June 22, 2007.

Selected as an astronaut by NASA in June 1998, Sunita has spent a total of 322 days in space on two missions and accumulated 50 hours and 40 minutes of cumulative EVA time on seven spacewalks.

She worked with Roscosmos on its contribution to the space station and with the first Expedition crew.

Meanwhile, 61-year-old Barry Wilmore has logged 178 days in space and has spent 25 hours and 36 minutes on four spacewalks.

(With inputs from ANI)