The third time was the charm for the launch of Boeing's Starliner, and the crewed spacecraft lifted off amid blue skies at 10:52 a.m. ET Wednesday morning.
Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were on board for the historic voyage of Starliner first crewed flight test, and they are currently en route to the International Space Station. No issues cropped up during the countdown to launch, as they had during two previous launch attempts over the past month.
"This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson after the launch.
Williams and Wilmore will spend just over 24 hours traveling to the space station, where the duo is expected to dock and join the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already onboard at 12:15 p.m. ET Thursday.
Then, the astronaut duo will remain for about eight days, although the stay could last longer than that, according to NASA officials. The earliest landing date is June 14.
"We have to have a lot of conditions that are just right before we bring the Starliner home and we're going to wait till the conditions are right and we've accomplished the test objectives before we do that," said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate.
