12:34 PM EDT, 06/05/2024 (MT Newswires) -- (Adds detail throughout)

Boeing's ( BA ) CST-100 Starliner space capsule rocketed into space on Wednesday with two astronauts onboard, heading for the International Space Stations after two previous launch attempts recently were scrubbed shortly before liftoff.

The Starliner capsule left Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on top of an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 am ET. It separated from the launch vehicle about 15 minutes into the flight and is scheduled to reach the International Space Station shortly after 12 pm on Thursday.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are expected to push the spacecraft and its subsystems through a series of tests before their expected return to Earth on June 14.

Wednesday's inaugural flight with a crew comes more than a year after the spacecraft was first slated to fly, with NASA and the United Launch Alliance - the space services consortium created by Boeing ( BA ) and Lockheed Martin ( LMT ) - more recently cancelling a May 6 launch to repair a leaky value, and again on Saturday when a launch computer malfunctioned less than four minutes before the scheduled liftoff.

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