Two years after its maiden experience there with none people, Boeing Co.'s new Starliner astronaut tablet became ready for launch on Monday night on its much-expected first crewed take a look at adventure to the International Space Station.

At 10:34 p.M. (0234 GMT) on Tuesday, the gumdrop-shaped CST-100 Starliner sporting  astronauts was scheduled to take off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop an Atlas V rocket furnished via the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint assignment United Launch Alliance (ULA).

Veteran NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, sixty one, a former U.S. Navy captain, and Sunita “Sunni” Williams, fifty eight, a former Navy aviator and test pilot, are traveling aboard the Starliner, that can accommodate up to seven group contributors.

They have completed two trips to the space station, totaling 500 days in orbit between them. Williams will be flying on Monday, with Wilmore serving as the designated commander.

Even though Starliner is meant to fly itself, Wilmore and Williams will need to practice operating the spaceship manually during the test trip so that the crew is prepared to take over if needed.

Forecasts indicated a 95% likelihood of favorable weather, so on Friday ULA finished reviewing launch preparations and gave the all-clear to move forward with the countdown at Cape Canaveral.

Since the legendary Atlas launch vehicle family first launched humans, including John Glenn, on orbital missions for NASA's Mercury program in the 1960s, this would be the first crewed space mission.

After a journey of almost 26 hours, if all goes according to plan, the capsule will rendezvous with the orbiting research outpost early on Wednesday, some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

Wilmore and Williams will spend around a week aboard the space station before returning to Earth on the Starliner and making a first-ever parachute and airbag-assisted touchdown in the United States Southwest Desert.

Before the Starliner receives final certification to start regularly scheduled operational flights under NASA's commercial crew program, it must succeed. This will provide NASA its first chance to fly passengers to low-Earth orbit from American soil since Elon Musk's SpaceX started doing so in 2020.

Given that Boeing's commercial aircraft segment has seen a string of safety incidents in recent years, the test flight occurs at a particularly crucial time for the company.

With years of development delays and nearly $1.5 billion in cost overruns for the aerospace behemoth on a $4.2 billion fixed-price contract with NASA, Boeing's journey to this point with Starliner has been a difficult one.

Numerous software and technical issues caused Boeing's initial attempt to launch an unmanned Starliner to the space station in 2019 to fail. A successful retry in 2022 made way for Monday night's mission.

NASA has contracted Starliner to conduct at least six additional crewed space station trips, depending on the results.

Boeing vice president Mark Nappi stated that the space agency and the corporation were "in total agreement" that the Starliner was prepared to fly with crew during a preflight conference on Friday. "We can't be more confident," he added.

NASA Chief Bill Nelson stated, "We give it extra attention because it is a test flight." “For this reason, we have two test pilots on board.”