In a test flight without people on board, Boeing’s Starliner capsule docks with the space station.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – Friday was the first time Boeing’s (NYSE: BA) new Starliner crew capsule docked with the International Space Station (ISS). This was a major goal of a high-stakes test flight into orbit without astronauts.

The CST-100 Starliner, which looks like a gumdrop, met up with the orbiting research outpost, which has a seven-person crew, about 26 hours after it was launched from Cape Canaveral U.S. Space Force Base in Florida.

The Starliner took off Thursday on an Atlas (NYSE:ATCO) V rocket provided by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Launch Alliance (ULA). Even though two of the thrusters on board failed, it got to the orbit it was supposed to be in 31 minutes later.

Boeing said that the two broken thrusters did not pose a threat to the rest of the space flight. This comes after more than two years of delays and expensive engineering setbacks in a program that was supposed to give NASA another way to get astronauts to and from orbit.

Docking with the ISS happened at 8:28 p.m. EDT (00:28 GMT Saturday) as the two vehicles flew 271 miles (436 km) over the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia, according to commentators on a live NASA webcast of the linkup.

It was the first time that spacecraft from both of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program partners were physically attached to the space station at the same time. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has been docked to the ISS since late April when it brought four astronauts to the ISS.

A rough way back to orbit

After a bad first test flight in late 2019, in which a software glitch made it impossible for the spacecraft to reach the space station, there was a lot riding on the outcome of this mission.

After problems with the Aerojet Rocketdyne-made propulsion system of the Starliner, Boeing canceled a second attempt to launch the capsule last summer.

Reuters reported last week that Starliner stayed grounded for nine more months while the two companies argued about why fuel valves were sticking and who was responsible for fixing them.

Boeing said that it finally fixed the problem with a temporary fix and will redesign the plane after this week’s flight.

Boeing said that, in addition to trying to figure out why thrusters failed soon after Thursday’s launch, it was keeping an eye on Starliner’s thermal-control system because it was acting strangely, but the capsule’s temperatures stayed the same.

During the NASA webcast, Boeing mission commentator Steve Siceloff said, “This is all part of learning how to run Starliner in space.”

The capsule is set to leave the space station on Wednesday for a trip back to Earth that will end with a soft landing in the New Mexico desert thanks to airbags.

As the Chicago-based company tries to get out of a series of crises in its jetliner business and its space defense unit, a success is seen as very important. Since the 2019 accident, engineering problems have cost nearly $600 million just for the Starliner program.

If the current mission goes well, Starliner could send its first group of astronauts to the space station as soon as the fall.

For now, the only person on board was a research dummy called Rosie the Rocketeer and dressed in a blue flight suit. She was strapped into the commander’s seat and took measurements of the conditions in the crew cabin during the trip. She also had 800 pounds (363 kg) of cargo to take to the space station.

Three astronauts from NASA, one from the European Space Agency in Italy, and three from Russia are living on the orbiting platform right now.

In a post on social media on Saturday, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, talked about the docking and said: “There is no danger to the station. There is order on the Russian part of the ISS.“

Since 2020, when crewed flights to orbit from American soil started again, nine years after the space shuttle program ended, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has been the only one to send NASA astronauts into space with its Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules.

Before, the only other way to get to the orbiting lab was to ride along on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.