Not every day a brand new spaceship arrives at the International Space Station. You can bet astronauts were watching when the Boeing Starliner space capsule docked at the lab.
New photos from the crew of the space station captured the moment when Boeing's first uncrewed Starliners docked at the station on Friday night. The Orbital Flight Test 2 is a critical test flight to see if the commercial space taxi is ready to fly astronauts to the station for NASA.
The European Space Agency'sSamantha Cristoforetti was the first person to arrive at the station on a Crew Dragon capsule. She took photos of the Starliners over a brilliant blue Earth.
Live updates: Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 mission to ISS
Related: Boeing's Starliner OFT-2 test flight in amazing photos
There are 4 images, the first one is image 1 and the 2nd one is image 3.
Boeing's Starliner is seen approaching the International Space Station in two photos. Two others show the commercial space capsule after it linked up with a forward docking port on the station.
Another photo shows Starliner. It was taken in the early hours of Friday, when Starliner was just a light in the dark.
She is here, and soon she will knock at our door.
Two NASA astronauts watched over the approach to Starliner to make sure it went according to plan.
Starliner is looking beautiful on the front of the space station.
3 of 3 are images
Russian cosmonaut Sergey Korsakov snapped photos of Starliner as it was about to pass behind a cargo ship.
Well done, Starliner!, wrote the author in one post. There were star streaks behind Starliner.
The Starliner OFT-2 was launched on a Atlas V rocket from the Space Force Station in Florida. The astronauts and Boeing will perform a series of tests on the craft while it is at the station.
Starliner is one of two commercial spaceships that NASA will use to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The Starliner and Crew Dragon vehicles were selected by the U.S. space agency to fly taxi flights to the station.
NASA has been flying astronauts by the company since May 2020, but Boeing has been delayed by a number of setbacks.
The first uncrewed Starliner test flight failed to reach the space station due to software issues. The second test flight was held up by stuck valves.
Those problems appeared to have been fixed on Friday, though Boeing engineers are still investigating some of the problems that popped up during Starliner's trip to the station.
Two of the 12 main thrusters failed early in the mission and two of the smaller reaction control thrusters shut down during Friday's docking operations. Boeing officials said that the thermal cooling system loop was not a serious risk to the mission.
The rest of the International Space Station's seven-person crew will open the OFT-2 spaceship on Saturday. 500 pounds of supplies and gear for the astronauts are in the spaceship.
NASA and Boeing have said that the landing target and departure date for the Starliner capsule may change depending on the weather.
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