AFP, Cape Canaveral

Boeing yesterday launched its very first astronauts bound for the International Space Station aboard a Starliner capsule, which joins a select club of spacecraft to carry humans beyond Earth.

The third time turned out to be the charm for the aerospace giant, after two previous bids to fly with crew were aborted late into the countdown, for technical reasons.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both of whom have two previous spaceflights under their belts, blasted off at 10:52 am (1452 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, for a roughly one-week stay at the station.

“Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you,” Wilmore, who is commander of the test flight, said just before liftoff. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket, and let’s push it to the heavens.”

Starliner becomes just the sixth type of US-built spaceship to fly Nasa astronauts, following the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the Space Shuttle from 1981 to 2011, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon from 2020.