NASA Astronaut Suni Williams Set to Launch Aboard Starliner Spacecraft to ISS, Liftoff Targeted for Mid-April
By NASA information center // February 22, 2024
NASA & SPACE NEWS
(NASA) – NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will launch aboard Starliner on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and dock at the International Space Station, where they will stay for up to two weeks.
Williams, who joined NASA in 1998, earned a master’s degree in engineering management from Florida Institute of Technology.
Williams, a U.S. Navy captain, spent 322 days in space on two shuttle missions. She received her commission in the Navy in May 1987 and became a helicopter pilot, logging more than 3,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft.
Preceding her selection into the astronaut program, Williams earned her advanced degree at Florida Tech’s Patuxent site in Maryland in 1995. She told the university’s Florida Tech Today magazine that the extended studies program was an ideal fit.
The mission will be the company’s first Starliner spacecraft mission with crew, with liftoff currently targeted for mid-April 2024 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Florida’s Space Coast.
The mission will test the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner system, including launch, docking, and return to Earth in the desert of the western United States. Boeing’s Starliner is the first U.S. crew capsule to return from orbit to solid ground rather than ocean.
Following a successful mission, NASA will begin the final process of certifying Starliner and systems for crewed missions to the space station.
The operational activity is scheduled to take place in early April.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is working with the American aerospace industry through a public-private partnership to launch astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil.
The goal of the program is to provide safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation on space station missions, which will allow for additional research time.
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