CNN —

Boeing’s Starliner will launch its crewed first voyage on Saturday. This mission has taken a decade to prepare.

At 12:25 pm, the new spacecraft will be launched atop an Atlas V launcher. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Livestreaming of the event begins at 8:15 am. ET on NASA’s website.

Mark Burger, 45th Weather Squadron’s launch weather officer at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, said that the weather conditions for launch are 90% favorable, with only wind and cumulus cloud concerns.

Crew Flight Test is the culmination Boeing’s efforts in developing a spacecraft that can compete with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, and increase US options to ferry astronauts to space station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The initiative is aimed at fostering collaboration between private industry and the federal agency.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press conference in May that if the flight is successful, it would be only the sixth first-ever journey by a crewed rocket in US history. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, and Suni William will ride on the spacecraft.

Nelson stated that “it started with Mercury and then Gemini, followed by Apollo, the Space Shuttle, (SpaceX’s Dragon) and now Starliner.”

Williams will be the first woman in history to fly on such a mission.

Starliner’s crew capsule, which is carrying Wilmore and Williams, will separate from the Atlas V and fire its engines after reaching orbit. Starliner will spend over 24 hours travelling to the International Space Station. Docking is anticipated at 1:50 pm. ET on Sunday.

The astronauts will test a variety of Starliner capabilities including how the thrusters perform, their spacesuits’ functionality within the capsule and manual piloting, in case they need to override Starliner autopilot.

The astronaut pair will spend eight days aboard the orbiting laboratory, joining the seven astronauts and six cosmonauts currently on board.

Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said during a news conference on Friday that the astronauts would test Starliner’s “safe haven” capability. This is designed to provide a space station crew with a shelter in the event of a space station problem.

Williams and Wilmore return to the United States using the Starliner capsule. They will land in the southwest of the country.

Stich stated that Williams and Wilmore could return as early as June 10. However, there are alternative dates in the event of bad weather.

NASA says that if the launch does not go as planned on Saturday, other dates are June 2, June 5, and June 6.

Starliner has been hampered by years of development problems, test flight issues and other costly setbacks. Boeing’s rival under NASA’s Commercial Program — SpaceX — has become the preferred transportation provider to the space agency astronauts.

This could be the last major milestone before NASA declares Boeing’s Starliner ready to perform routine operations, including the delivery of astronauts and cargo into the space station.

We are looking forward to this mission. Mark Nappi said in a Boeing statement that this is a test, and we expect to learn a lot. “We will improve. This improvement begins with the Starliner-1 flight, which will be better than the one we are about to fly.”

Starliner had been preparing for its first crewed attempt to launch on May 6, when engineers discovered a problem with a valve in the upper part of the second stage (or the second stage) of the Atlas V rocket. The rocket and spacecraft were rolled away from the launchpad to be tested and repaired.

Mission teams then reported a small leak of helium within the spacecraft’s service module. The helium leak was found in a part known as a flange of a single reaction system thruster. Helium is used for the thrusters’ firing.

The space agency stated that the leak does not pose a risk to a mission.

He said, “We really looked at our options with this particular fitting.” “A fuel, oxidizer and helium lines all go into the Flange, making it difficult to work on. It is almost dangerous to work with.”

Stich explained that rather than replacing the helium, the teams determined that the leak was small enough to manage.

Nappi stated that when they looked at the problem it wasn’t about making trades. It came down to ‘is this safe or not’ and it is. We decided to fly what we had because it was safe.

Mission teams have monitored the leak during the Saturday morning launch countdown. So far, there has been no issue reported. Nappi explained that the teams spent the last two weeks assessing the acceptable levels of helium leakage and troubleshooting. These have been included in the engineers’ rulebook.

Engineers also identified a “design weakness” in the propulsion systems as they evaluated the helium problem in the run-up to the launch. This vulnerability is a remote scenario where certain thrusters could fail when the vehicle leaves Earth orbit without a backup way of returning safely.

Stich, who spoke at a news conference on May 24, said that NASA and Boeing had worked with the thruster vendor to develop a plan for a deorbit burn in the event of a problem.

Stich stated, “We have restored this redundancy in the backup capability for a very distant set of failures involving the direct burn.”

According to the space agency, after a meeting on flight readiness on May 29, NASA, Boeing, and United Launch Alliance (which built the rocket) “verified launch ready, including all systems and facilities supporting the test flight.”

Mission teams also examined the Starliner parachutes, after a parachute from Blue Origin’s suborbital crewed mission failed to fully expand. Stich stated that Starliner uses similar components to the parachute system.

Blue Origin shared its flight data with Boeing, NASA and the Starliner team, who then assessed Starliner parachutes and deemed them to be “good enough to fly.”

Starliner can help NASA fix an anomaly that occurred on the space station Wednesday, according to Dana Weigel. She is manager of NASA’s International Space Station Program.

The pump in the station’s urinal processor assembly has failed.

Weigel explained that the urine processor took all the urine from the crew and processed it as the first step in a water-recovery system. The water is then sent downstream to a water processing system that turns it into drinkable water. It’s designed as a closed-loop system.

The pump was supposed to last until fall and a replacement would be flying on a cargo replenishment mission scheduled for August. Weigel explained that the failure of the pump “put us into a situation where we would have to store a lot of urine.”

The urine must now be stored in containers on board. A replacement pump was swapped in Starliner’s cargo to solve the problem. The pump weighs approximately 150 pounds. To compensate, the team removed from Starliner two crew suitcases containing clothes and toiletries like shampoo and soaps that were hand-picked by Wilmore & Williams.

Weigel stated that there is a supply of generic clothing and toiletries available on the station for the astronauts to use during their brief stay.

Wilmore and Williams are in quarantine for their health before launch, according to NASA astronaut Mike Fincke. He is scheduled to be the pilot of the Boeing Starliner-1 flight that will follow the successful test flight.

He said: “Butch, Suni, and our leadership and management teams are ready to go.”

This report was contributed by CNN’s Deblina Chakhraborty.