NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams is about to embark on a whole new adventure in space: commanding the first operational flight of Boeing’s new space capsule, the CST-100 Starliner. And when she flies, it will mark just the second time that the Starliner has ever hosted a crew.
Boeing has been developing the Starliner as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative to send NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station on private US spacecraft. A second company, SpaceX, is also developing a vehicle for the program — a passenger version of the company’s Dragon cargo capsule. After four years of development, the capsules are finally nearing completion and the companies are preparing to fly their vehicles for the…
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