Watch the 1st crewed launch of the Boeing Starliner tonight

The countdown clock is ticking for a major mission from our Space Coast. We’re a little bit nervous, but we’re we’re confident we’re ready to go. For the first time, a Boeing Starliner capsule will launch with astronauts on board, and a successful flight test will bring NASA closer to certifying the Starliner for more missions in the future. At this hour, a Starliner spacecraft named Calypso is out on the launchpad atop an Atlas 5 rocket. You can see it right there at the top. There’s the cone shape. Good evening. I’m Greg Worman. And I’m Martha Sagowski. Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams will launch to the International Space Station at 10:34 tonight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Shuttle Knights Melanie Hold, Our expert begins our live team coverage at the Kennedy Space Center monitoring today’s pre launch activities. And Mel, This flight test will help NASA certify the storm liner for regular missions to the ISS. This is really important to the agency. This will give them two ways to ferry astronauts to the space station. And this test flight is being flown by which Wilmore and Sonny Williams, both veteran NASA astronauts. They will fly on a Starliner atop an Atlas 5 ULA rocket After their 26 hour flight to the space station. Wilmore and Williams will spend about a week at the ISS testing the Starliner systems. Now, we’re told that will include manual piloting of the spacecraft. And once the spacecraft gets docked, the crew will continue to evaluate the Starliner systems. But the pair have already played a large role in getting the spacecraft ready for flight. Tonight we got to speak to one of their NASA colleagues. In the last half hour, astronaut Victor Glover. He’ll fly on the Artemis 2 mission. That’s a crew around the moon next year. But today he spoke to us about his colleagues Butch and Sonny. I will tell you all of the hard work, all the testing and training, a lot of which didn’t exist, and they were figuring out what needed to be tested and what types of training crews will need to safely learn this vehicle for future missions. That’s behind them now. And so they have worked very hard. Their trainers have worked very hard. The engineers, coders, the financial and management people have worked very hard. But right now, I can tell you that Butch and Sonny most likely feel. I I hope and pray that they feel relaxed and ready. Tonight’s 1034 launch window is instantaneous. If Starliner doesn’t lift off tonight, there is a backup window tomorrow at 10:11 PM. We’ll be right here monitoring the progress for tonight’s launch. And I’ll tell you what, Chief Meteorologist Tom Terry. Well, he’s back there monitoring our launch forecast. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, we got a lot going on here close to home. My monitor went away there, but we are going to see some pretty good weather coming through. We do have some pretty warm weather on the way this week. But again, the launch does look good. We do have this front coming through. This is our sea breeze and as you saw from Mel’s live shot, it actually cleared out very nicely. My camera went to black there, but we do have clear skies overhead. But that front now, that sea breeze coming through, so the showers that we’re going to be looking out for going to be over the interior away from the coast. And we’re even hoping to clear some of these showers out tonight in time to be able to see a launch. Right now, 74 degrees 1034 tonight is the instantaneous launch. 95% chance of the weather’s going to be great. And if for some reason they have to delay, tomorrow also looks to be just about as good as the weather we’re going to see tonight, Greg. All right, Tom. Thank you again. The launch is set for this evening, so find your perch and be ready. Or you can watch it right here, because when it goes up, we bring it to you live as we always do on air and online. Meanwhile, SpaceX launching another round of satellites in the Low Earth Orbit 321 mission hooked up. It took off at around 2:00 this afternoon from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The satellites are used to provide high speed Internet to remote regions and we have.