WOEING:

Shot: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, arrive in Florida for Boeing’s first human spaceflight.

Wilmore stressed this is a test flight meant to uncover anything amiss.

“Do we expect it to go perfectly? This is the first human flight of the spacecraft,” he told reporters. “I’m sure we’ll find things out. That’s why we do this.”

—AP, April 25th, 2024.

Chaser: Boeing Starliner astronauts will return home on a SpaceX Dragon in 2025, NASA confirms:

On Saturday (Aug. 24), NASA announced its final decision regarding the fates of the two astronauts aboard the International Space Station whose original eight-day space jaunt had turned into a nebulous multi-month excursion. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule on June 5, will return home no earlier than February of 2025.

Furthermore, NASA and Boeing jointly decided that Williams and Wilmore will not head back to Earth aboard the same Starliner capsule that brought them to the ISS. Rather, they will climb aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule for their descent to our planet, a vessel dedicated to the Crew-9 mission set to launch in September that will be modified to accommodate the Starliner astronauts. That capsule will only launch with two crewmembers in order to create space for Wilmore and Williams when the time comes to return to Earth, and it will also be reconfigured to carry more cargo, personal items and Dragon-specific spacesuits for the Starliner duo.

Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing are going to work on bringing the Starliner capsule back to Earth, crewless, to land in White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, sometime in September.

—Space.com, yesterday.

Hangover: The lack of questions Vice President Harris will receive, despite:

The DTs: Vice President Kamala Harris Asks NASA if It Can Track Trees by Race for ‘Environmental Justice.’

Vice President Kamala Harris asked NASA if it could use its satellites to track trees “by race” in various neighborhoods as part of “environmental justice” during a recent display on climate change, leading many to ridicule the vice president online and even giving rise to a “Black Trees Matter” hashtag.

—Breitbart.com, November 7th, 2021.