NASA Astronauts Bob Hines and
Kjell Lindgren opened the hatch to the unmanned capsule at 12:04 p.m. EDT (1604GMT) and floated in, head-first, into the unmanned capsule
Starliner lifted off on
Thursday atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Launch Alliance (ULA)
IT reached its intended
preliminary orbit 31 minutes later despite the failure of two onboard thrusters.
Boeing said the two
defective thrusters posed no risk to the rest of the spaceflight, which comes after more than two years of delays
Docking with ISS took place
at 8:28 p.m. EDT (0028 GMT Saturday) as the two vehicles flew 271 miles (436 km) over the south Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia,
It marked the first time
spacecraft from both of NASA's Commercial Crew Program partners were physically attached to the space station at the same time.