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NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore are the crewmembers of NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission. The duo will launch to the International Space Station aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance rocket in May and will stay aboard the orbiting laboratory for about two weeks. Wilmore and Williams trained for this flight test in facilities across the U.S., including NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The mission will test the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner system, including launch, docking, and a return to Earth. After successful completion of the mission, NASA will begin the final process of certifying Starliner and its systems for crewed rotation missions to the space station. Wilmore, a U.S. Navy captain, is a veteran of two spaceflights and has accumulated 178 days in space. Selected as an astronaut in 2000, he served as a flight engineer for Expedition 41 from September to November 2014, then assumed command of Expedition 42 until his return to Earth in March 2015. During this mission, he logged 167 days in space and performed four spacewalks. In 2009, Wilmore served as a pilot aboard space shuttle Atlantis for STS-129. Williams, a retired Navy captain, is a veteran of two space station missions, Expedition 14/15 and 32/33, and served as commander of Expedition 33. Selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1998, she has logged 322 days in space, first launching on the space shuttle Discovery with the crew of STS-116, then on a Roscosmos Soyuz spacecraft. Williams has completed seven spacewalks, totaling 50 hours and 40 minutes. For more mission resources, please visit: Join NASA as we go forward to the Moon and on to Mars -- discover the latest on Earth, the Solar System and beyond with a weekly update in your inbox. Subscribe at:
