NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have touched down at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, gearing up for Boeing’s long-awaited first crewed spaceflight on May 6. The stakes? Sky-high. 🌌
The Starliner capsule—Boeing’s answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon—will launch atop an Atlas rocket, heading to the International Space Station for a weeklong test run. This mission marks Boeing’s chance to prove it can safely ferry astronauts after years of delays, parachute glitches, and even flammable tape issues. 💥
Wilmore, a seasoned test pilot, kept it real: \"Do we expect it to go perfectly? This is the first human flight… We’ll find things out. That’s why we do this.\" Talk about keeping calm under pressure! 👨🚀👩🚀
NASA’s bet on two private players—Boeing and SpaceX—is all about ensuring competition as the ISS era winds down by 2030. Fun fact: This will be the first astronaut crew on an Atlas rocket since the 1960s Mercury missions. 🛰️
With SpaceX already flying crews since 2020, can Boeing catch up? The new space race is officially ON. 🔥
