Indian-Origin Astronaut Sunita Williams Pilots NASA's Boeing Starliner to Space

NASA's Boeing Starliner spacecraft, piloted by Indian-origin astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams and fellow veteran NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, has embarked on its historic maiden voyage to the International Space Station.

Sunita Williams, making her third trip to space, becomes the first female astronaut to fly on the inaugural flight of a crewed spacecraft, marking the sixth such journey in US history.

At 8:22 p.m. (IST) on an Atlas 5 rocket, Williams launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spaceship from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at Florida’s Space Launch Complex-41.

The capsule is expected to reach the orbiting laboratory at 12:15 p.m. EDT, Thursday, June 6.

A postlaunch news conference will be held at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is scheduled to begin at 12:30 pm, the NASA said on Thursday.

This mission, part of NASA's "Commercial Crew Program," faced multiple delays before finally taking off. Previously, a launch attempt for the mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, was aborted less than four minutes before liftoff due to a malfunction in the ground launch computer's power supply. The issue has since been resolved.

Williams and Wilmore are expected to spend over 24 hours traveling to the International Space Station. The Commercial Crew Program, which selected Boeing and SpaceX to develop spacecraft for transporting astronauts to the ISS, was initiated after NASA retired its Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

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