NASA time-lapse shows Starliner capsule stacked atop rocket

We’re only a week away from seeing Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft blast off from the launchpad on the Kennedy Area Middle in Florida in an important take a look at flight to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS).

In a bid to create some buzz forward of launch, and to unfold the phrase far and extensive concerning the Might 19 mission, Boeing has shared a 113-second time-lapse video (under) exhibiting the spacecraft on what seems to be the simplest journey it should ever need to make.

The footage reveals the Starliner being transported from the Business Crew & Cargo Processing Facility on the Kennedy Area Middle to the Vertical Integration Facility operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), whose Atlas V rocket will energy the Starliner to orbit subsequent week.

We sped up this time lapse so you may see #Starliner's rollout and stack in underneath 2 minutes.

Watch from Starliner's perspective because it heads from our manufacturing unit to the @ulalaunch Vertical Integration Facility.

Be a part of us for Orbital Flight Check-2 launch on Might 19. pic.twitter.com/g2cyviU4Oa

— Boeing Area (@BoeingSpace) May 10, 2022

For folk eager to see extra of the spacecraft’s journey to the Atlas V rocket, Boeing has additionally shared an unedited model of the time-lapse, which runs for simply over 9 minutes.

Subsequent week’s uncrewed mission is vastly necessary for Boeing because it follows a failed flight in December 2019 in addition to a second mission hiccup final August the place technical points meant the Starliner couldn’t even get off the launchpad.

Boeing’s Orbital Flight Check-2 is designed to exhibit that the aerospace big has resolved all the points and is now capable of fly safely to and from the house station.

Starliner is predicted to dock on the ISS on Might 20, about 24 hours after launch. Will probably be loaded with greater than 500 kilos of NASA cargo and crew provides. The spacecraft will keep docked on the ISS for between 5 and 10 days earlier than returning to Earth for a parachute-assisted touchdown in New Mexico, bringing with it round 600 kilos of cargo.

If the mission goes in keeping with plan, it should give NASA another choice alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft for transporting astronauts and cargo to orbital outposts. For now, which means the ISS, however within the coming years, following the ISS’s decommissioning, different near-Earth liveable satellites are anticipated to enter operation.

After years of growth and testing, SpaceX first deployed its Dragon spacecraft for uncrewed cargo missions to the house station in 2012. Drawing on its experiences with the Dragon, SpaceX constructed the Crew Dragon for astronaut flights, the primary of which came about in 2020. Right here’s a assessment of that historic mission in photos.