The Boeing Company is preparing to send a space capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA this Friday, 20 December at 13:36 CAT (11:36 GMT).
The capsule will lift off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Known as Starliner, the capsule will head out without crew, but should its mission be successful, it will be used by astronauts in the next year, reports the BBC.
The mission to the International Space Station (ISS) should last a week, after which the capsule will return for landing in New Mexico on 28 December.
The Boeing Starliner is part of NASA’s project to make independent human access to low-Earth orbit possible. If all goes well, NASA plans to purchase seats in what is termed by some as ‘commercial astronaut taxi services’.
‘NASA wants to be one customer of many customers in a very robust commercial marketplace for human spaceflight in the future,’ said the agency’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine. ‘The ultimate goal being we want to drive down costs, increase innovation, and increase access to space in a way that we’ve never seen before.’
The capsule will be carrying 270kg of supplies to the ISS as well as an anthropomorphic test device (ATD) or dummy, nicknamed ‘Rosie’. She will be able to give engineers an indication of how human astronauts might experience the journey in this capsule, especially during more rigorous legs of the journey like launching and landing.
Starliner is going up on the tried-and-tested Atlas V rocket.
Image: Facebook/NASA
