Boeing’s unmanned Starliner spacecraft successfully docked at the International Space Station on Friday night. The Starliner departed from the launch site in Cape Canaveral on Thursday and docked at the space station almost 26 hours later, at 02:28 AM Dutch time.
Boeing is making an important step with this successful flight. Two previous attempts failed. The first manned flight of the Starliner will probably follow at the end of this year or early next year.
In 2021, a planned launch of the Starliner was postponed due to technical problems. In 2019, Boeing did succeed in taking off the aircraft, but due to software problems, the Starliner was unable to reach the ISS and had to return to Earth after 48 hours in space.
Like Elon Musk’s competitor SpaceX, Boeing has a contract with the American space agency NASA to fly crews and supplies to the ISS. SpaceX has successfully completed four of those missions.