by Boeing’s Starliner capsule will launch on a crucial test mission to the International Space Station tonight (May 19), and many people in the southeastern US will be able to see the action with their own eyes.
starliner is scheduled to lift off on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida tonight at 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT), kicking off an unmanned mission called Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2).
No matter where you live, you can watch the space flight action online here on space.com, courtesy of NASA. But if you live near the Atlantic coast from Florida to Delaware, you might catch a glimpse of the Atlas V and Starliner rising into the sky, according to a ULA visibility map posted on Twitter today.
Live updates: Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test Mission 2 to the ISS
Those viewing opportunities are weather dependent, of course. But if you live within visibility range and your skies are clear tonight, you should go out at the specified time and look up and to the east; you might see something memorable.
If all goes according to plan in OFT-2, Starliner will arrive at International Space Station on Friday night (May 20), just over 24 hours after liftoff. The capsule will remain docked to the orbiting lab for four to five days, then return to Earth for a parachute-assisted landing in New Mexico.
The main goal is to show that the Starliner is ready to transport NASA astronauts to and from the space station. Boeing signed a contract with the space agency for such taxi services in 2014. spacex it signed a similar agreement at the same time and has already launched four operational manned flights to the orbiting laboratory with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
As the name of the mission suggests, OFT-2 will be Starliner’s second attempt to reach the space station. During the first attempt, in December 2019, the capsule suffered several failures and was stranded in too low an orbit to allow a reunion.
OFT-2 was originally supposed to launch last summer, but pre-launch checks revealed a number of stuck valves in starliner propulsion systema problem that took about eight months to identify and address.
Mike Wall is the author of “out there(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; Illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @migueldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacepointcom or in Facebook.
