Astronauts to launch from Cape Canaveral for its 1st human spaceflight in nearly 56 years

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — For the first time in over half a century, astronauts will be lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida next week. The Space Shuttle Program, which flew 135 missions, and the more recent Space X launches, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, instead.

If all goes according to plan, the Boeing Starliner spacecraft on an Atlas V rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral, making it the first time humans have taken flight from the space station in nearly 56 years.

The last time humans were launched into space from the Cape was on Apollo 7 in 1968. After the Apollo 7 mission, all manned missions moved to Kennedy Space Center, a different launch complex.

The two NASA astronauts assigned to Boeing’s first human spaceflight Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at their launch site last week, just a little over a week before their scheduled liftoff on May 6.

Wilmore and Williams flew from Houston into Kennedy Space Center on April 25 and will serve as test pilots for Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which is making its debut with the crew after years of delay.

Due to Friday’s blast off atop an Atlas rocket, the Starliner will fly to the International Space Station for a weeklong shakedown cruise. Boeing is trying to catch up to SpaceX, which has been launching astronauts for NASA since 2020.

No one was aboard Boeing’s two previous Starliner test flights. The first, in 2019, didn’t make it to the space station because of software and other problems. Boeing repeated the demo in 2022. More recently, the capsule was plagued by parachute issues and flammable tape that had to be removed.

Wilmore stressed this is a test flight meant to uncover anything amiss.

“Do we expect it to go perfectly? This is the first human flight of the spacecraft,” he told reporters. “I’m sure we’ll find things out. That’s why we do this.”

NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing a decade ago, paying billions of dollars for the companies to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. The space agency is still keen on having two capsules for its astronauts, even with the space station winding down by 2030.

“That’s vitally important,” Wilmore noted.

Wilmore and Williams will be the first astronauts to ride an Atlas rocket since NASA’s Project Mercury in the early 1960s.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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