Cape Canaveral, Florida - After years of delays, Boeing's Starliner space capsule is set to fly into space with humans for the first time on Monday night.

NASA has set the departure date from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida for Monday at 10.34 PM local time.

During the test flight, the capsule is to carry US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the International Space Station ISS.

With a successful test flight, Boeing hopes to catch up with multi-billionaire Elon Musk 's SpaceX company, whose Dragon capsule has already been transporting astronauts to the ISS on behalf of NASA for several years.

The first manned flight of Boeing's Starliner was repeatedly delayed due to technical problems.

In 2019, for example, the first attempt at an unmanned flight to the ISS failed due to software problems.

In 2022, however, the first unmanned Starliner flight to the space station succeeded.

This launch comes on the heels of increased public as well as governmental scrutiny about the Boeing company after a series of serious technical failures in their airplanes and several mysterious deaths of company whisteblowers.