Sunita Williams scripts history, rides Boeing Starliner into space

As the first woman to test a spacecraft on its first trip, Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams made history. It should be noted that she had contributed to the spacecraft’s design during the previous ten years. As Ms. Williams traveled to space, she passed above India.

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

On the third try, there was a nominal lift-off. A day later, the Starliner will dock with the International Space Station after achieving the proper orbit. The International Space Station, the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and the Boeing Starliner are the three crewed spacecraft that the US currently has in orbit at the same time.

If everything goes according to plan, NASA says the Starliner will dock to the Harmony module of the station’s forward-facing port, and Ms. Williams and her fellow passenger Butch Wilmore will stay for approximately a week to test the spacecraft and its subsystems before NASA works to finish the transportation system’s final certification for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory as part of its Commercial Crew Program.

The Starliner is the most advanced crew module yet to fly, according to NASA, and was created for astronauts by astronauts.

Williams, a space travel poster child for female aspirants, soared to the heavens in a brand-new spaceship.

Prior to being surpassed by Peggy Whitson, the astronaut of Indian descent had been in space for 322 days and had set a record for the most hours that a woman had spent on a spacewalk.

This time, she creates history by becoming the first female pilot on a newly developed space shuttle’s first crewed voyage.

While the 59-year-old acknowledged that she was a little anxious, she insisted that she was not anxious about taking to the skies in a new spacecraft that she co-designed with Boeing and NASA experts.

This almost ten-day voyage will assist in demonstrating the Starliner’s spaceworthiness. Additionally, it would demonstrate the team’s preparedness to obtain a NASA certification and conduct extended missions on behalf of the US space agency.

Some speculate that Boeing’s space business may be affected by the issues ailing its aviation division, given that the Starliner project is far behind schedule and significantly over budget.

Ten years after NASA awarded a $4.2 billion contract to build it from the ground up in 2014, not a single successful human space flight has occurred. On the other hand, Space X, which had a comparable contract to create Crew Dragon, completed the project for an estimated cost of $2.6 billion. astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) already use SpaceX its crew module.