NASA Astronauts Test Boeing’s Spaceship Ahead Of Major Crewed Launch

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and The Boeing Company are progressing towards a crucial crewed test fight (CFT) of the Starliner spacecraft in April. Boeing is one of NASA's partners for the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) through which the agency is contracting the private sector to conduct crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle's retirement. However, while SpaceX, which is NASA's other CCP contractor, will launch its seventh crewed mission to the ISS this Monday, Boeing's Starliner has faced several delays that have left it unable to launch crewed space station missions.

NASA and Boeing have been making steady progress on Starliner so far, and are currently running tets on the spaceship's service module. This is a separate portion of the spacecraft with engines that are responsible for aligning it with the space station and then pushing it away at the point of departure. The duo is evaluating these engines and Boeing is running additional tests to ensure that the engines remain faultless ahead of the crucial crewed flight that is currently expected to take place in April.

At the same time Starliner's crew of two - veteran NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunite Williams - are busy testing the equipment that they will use on the maiden voyage. Astronaut Williams has almost spent a year in space and has held several records during her career, while Whilmore is a distinguished U.S. Navy test pilot with hundreds of jet aircraft carrier landings under his belt.

The astronauts are now testing Starliner's