Boeing Starliner launches first manned space mission

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft blasted off Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS).

It's the first crewed test flight for the Boeing craft and only the sixth inaugural journey of a crewed spacecraft in U.S. history.

The launch comes after a series of costly delays and two scrubbed launches and will be the final test flight before the spacecraft can be certified to begin regularly ferrying NASA crews to and from the ISS.

The 15-foot-wide capsule, powered by an Atlas V rocket, will spend about a day in orbit before docking with the space station on Thursday at 12:15am ET.

Mr. Wilmore, the commander, has already spent 167 days in space and Ms. Williams, the pilot, has spent 322. They will stay aboard the ISS for about a week, allowing for more tests of the spacecraft and its systems.

If successful, the Starliner is set to join SpaceX's Crew Dragon as one of two vehicles to operate under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

After the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA lost its ability to fly astronauts to the ISS and had to hitch rides on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

SpaceX's Demo-2 mission in 2020 changed that, becoming the first crewed orbital spacecraft launched from the U.S. in nearly a decade and the first ever operated by a commercial provider. SpaceX has since flown 13 crews to orbit.

If all goes well with the Starliner, the U.S. will have two options for getting crew and cargo to and from the ISS.