Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore test unique Starliner’s manual piloting

Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams. Pic/NASA

On the way to the International Space Station aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams and her colleague Butch Wilmore tested out a unique capability of the spacecraft on orbit - manual piloting.

Williams flew to space for the third time on Wednesday along with Wilmore, scripting history as the first members aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on a 25-hour flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Williams, 58, is the pilot for the flight test while Wilmore, 61, is commander of the mission. The spacecraft is usually autonomous, but the crew used hand controller to point and aim it during about two hours of free-flight demonstrations.

During a far-field demo, they pointed Starliner's nose toward the Earth so that its communications antenna on the back of the Service Module was pointed at the Tracking and Data Relay satellites. They then moved it so that its solar array pointed at the sun to show they could charge the internal batteries if ever needed, Boeing said.

Next, they swung Starliner around and pointed the nose away from Earth to look at the stars. This was to show they could manually use the star trackers in the VESTA system to establish their attitude in space in case all three flight computers were to ever go out or be turned off at the same time.

Then, they manually sped Starliner up and then 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.

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