“Like Going Back Home”: Sunita Williams On Flying To Space Station

On her third journey to space, Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams riding on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft is likely to reach what she has described as “her home” in space  – the International Space Station – today at 9.45 pm.

Ms Williams has been in space now for nearly a day after a successful lift-off on June 5 on an Atlas V rocket from the Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA.

On its third attempt, it was a flawless lift-off, though on the way NASA said they detected “three helium leaks” and that experts are monitoring the health of the Boeing Starliner.

Ms Williams, 59, before the lift-off had admitted to being a bit nervous, but said she had no jitters about flying in a new spacecraft. She had helped design the Starliner, working with engineers from NASA and Boeing.

“When I reach the International Space Station, it will be like going back home,” she said.

According to Boeing, the company that made the Starliner at a cost of over $4.2 billion, the astronauts are safe and “on the way to the International Space Station.”

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams tested out a unique capability of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on orbit – manual piloting. Although the spacecraft is usually autonomous, the crew used the hand controller to point and aim the spacecraft during about two hours of free-flight demonstrations.

“We’ve also spun out the manual manoeuvring and it is precise, much more so than even the simulator,” said Mr Wilmore. “Stopping exactly on a number you want to stop on, the precision is pretty amazing.”

Boeing says the astronauts then manually sped up the Starliner and slowed it down, which slightly raised and then lowered their orbit. This was to show that the crew could manually break away from the space station orbit during rendezvous, if necessary.

The SUV-sized Starliner can accommodate seven crew, but on this first test flight only two are being flown.

NASA says if all goes well, the Starliner will dock to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module and Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore will remain at the space station for about a week to test the Starliner spacecraft and its subsystems before NASA works to complete final certification of the transportation system for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Programme.

It said the Starliner has been designed for astronauts by astronauts and is the most modern crew module ever to be flown.

Boeing says once in a stable orbit on course for the International Space Station, the Starliner will begin its rendezvous procedures. As the Starliner closes on the station, the vehicle’s star tracker cameras will first see the orbiting lab as a distant, but bright, point of light moving in front of a background of fixed stars.

Over the next few hours, Starliner will slowly move itself closer to the station and then pause before entering the 200-metre “keep out sphere” until station flight controllers clear it to enter. Starliner then begins the docking process, pausing once more 10 meters away from a Boeing-built International Docking Adapter and then continuing to final approach and docking.

Ms Williams was given the opportunity to name the spacecraft she would fly in, and she named it “Calypso” after the famous ship on which the French oceanographer and legendary filmmaker Jacques-Yves Cousteau explored the oceans when she was still a student.

She also has a school named after her, the Sunita Williams Elementary School, in the town of Needham in the US, and if all goes well, she will talk to schoolchildren on June 10 from aboard the space station.