Boeing's new Starliner capsule docks with space station

Boeing's new Starliner capsule and its inaugural two-member Nasa crew safely docked with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday, meeting a key test in proving the vessel's flight-worthiness and sharpening Boeing's competition with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The rendezvous was achieved despite an earlier loss of several guidance-control jet thrusters, some of them due to a helium propulsion leak, which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and Boeing said should not compromise the mission.

The CST-100 Starliner, with veteran astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams aboard, arrived at the orbiting platform after a flight of roughly 26 hours following its launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The reusable gumdrop-shaped capsule, dubbed "Calypso" by its crew, was lofted into space on Wednesday atop an Atlas V rocket furnished and flown by Boeing-Lockheed Martin's United Launch Alliance joint venture.

It autonomously docked with the ISS while both were orbiting some 250 miles (400km) over the southern Indian Ocean at 1.34pm EDT (1734 GMT).

The spacecraft's final approach to the ISS and docking, following a brief interval when Wilmore manually controlled the capsule, was shown on a Nasa webcast.

Wilmore and Williams are the first crew to fly Starliner, which Boeing and Nasa are hoping to certify for regular rides to the ISS – a role SpaceX has been fulfilling for the past four years, at significantly lower cost to the US taxpayer.

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

Boeing's programme faced setbacks ranging from a software bug that put the spaceship on a bad trajectory on its first uncrewed test, to the discovery that the cabin was filled with flammable electrical tape after the second.

A successful mission would help dispel the bitter taste left by years of safety scares and delays, and provide Boeing a much-needed reprieve from the intense safety concerns surrounding its passenger jets.

During their roughly weeklong stay on the orbital outpost, Wilmore and Williams will continue to evaluate the spacecraft systems, including simulating whether the ship can be used as a safe haven in the event of problems.

After undocking from the ISS, Starliner will re-enter the atmosphere, with the crew experiencing 3.5G as they slow down from 17,500mph (28,000kph) to a gentle parachute- and airbag-assisted touchdown in the western United States.