Boeing’s Starliner space taxi is due to be sent to the International Space Station for the first time early Friday — and although the only crew on board this time is a mannequin, the real astronauts who’ll take the next turn are tracking every move. But if it performs without incident, astronauts will start using the craft next year. Lift-off atop an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is scheduled for 06:36 local time (11:36 GMT) on Friday. The automated mission to the ISS should last a week. The capsule will come home to New Mexico, using parachutes and airbags to make a soft landing on desert terrain in the early hours of 28 December. Not since 2011, when the shuttles were retired, have Americans launched from their own soil; US astronauts have been hitching rides in Russian Soyuz capsules instead. NASA allotted SpaceX $2.6 billion and Boeing $4.2 billion in 2014 for the Commercial Crew Program, the formal name of the program that will launch the Crew Dragon and Starliner, representing a new approach for the space agency. While NASA has long worked with private sector contractors to build spacecraft, the organization does not typically hand over design, operation and testing duties to the companies. While Starliner is designed to fly autonomously, astronauts are trained to step in for almost any emergency situation. NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is equipped with Starliner simulators and trainers – including the Boeing Mission Simulator, which looks, feels and operates just like the Starliner itself – to ensure the astronauts are prepared for any situation that may arise during their missions. Flight control teams in NASA’s Christopher C. Kraft Mission Control Center at Johnson will take part in all commercial crew flights from the ground. The International Space Station flight control teams will make sure the space station is ready to welcome Starliner, and just down the hall a new Starliner flight control team including flight directors who have a very long and proud history of flying human-rated spacecraft, will oversee Starliner’s mission. Once the first crewed flights in commercial vehicles are under way, NASA’s networks will ensure astronaut safety through robust and reliable communications services. The Space Network, managed out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, consists of ground stations and a collection of relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit. It will provide data and voice communications to crew spacecraft during ascent to the space station, docking, undocking, reentry and landing or splashdown. To ensure spacecraft can return back home, Ames’ Arc Jet Complex can simulate the blazing heat generated while entering Earth’s atmosphere. Whether commercial partners develop their own heatshield materials or use NASA’s designs, testing their performance at temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit ensures they’re up to the task. These tests are supplemented and strengthened by virtual simulations performed on NASA’s supercomputers. Researchers at Langley worked with Boeing to conduct a series of tests to qualify Starliner’s landing airbag system to ensure astronauts can finish their mission and return safely to Earth for both planned landings on land as well as emergency water landings. In 2020 alone, both Boeing and SpaceX are preparing to launch humans to the station and return them safely to Earth. Meanwhile, the agency also is preparing for the first uncrewed flight of SLS and Orion – the same rocket and spacecraft that will take astronauts back to the Moon through the Artemis program and one day to Mars. The work commercial partners are doing couldn’t be done without NASA’s support, but NASA’s future exploration to other worlds wouldn’t be possible without these companies, either. Enabling space exploration markets for many businesses in low-Earth orbit creates an economic engine for the U.S. and a sustainable presence on the Moon with the Artemis program means a wider infrastructure of which our partners are a fundamental part. NASA and Boeing may be ready to launch the Starliner, but before ignition can begin, the weather must be nearly perfect. At the time of writing, the 45th Space Wing’s Weather Squadron at Cape Canaveral was maintaining an outlook of an 80 percent chance for safe launch conditions. “All we will be looking for are a few isolated showers pushing in off the Atlantic waters,” said Will Ulrich, the squadron’s launch weather officer. “If one of those showers were to push onshore, say during the count it could produce winds of around 25 to 30 knots, which is nearing some of those [acceptable limits].”