Two NASA astronauts were on their way to the International Space Station after Boeing’s pioneering Starliner capsule finally made its much-delayed first crewed flight from Cape Canaveral. The liftoff came seven years after the spacecraft’s original target date, five years after the failure of an unmanned test flight and after a more recent series of delays for technical reasons that led to launch attempts being halted twice. Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams reached orbit 12 minutes after the 10:52 a.m. ET launch. If the eight- to 10-day mission is successful, Starliner will give Nasa a second option to ferry people into low-Earth orbit after SpaceX’s Dragon capsule
