CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Starliner will send its first astronaut crew to space as early as Monday , and Mission Control plans one last big test to get ready for the event.in Houston on an hours-long prelaunch test on Sunday . A NASA team in Mission Control took control of"This is a big weekend for NASA … and it's not just because we're putting our friends on it on a new spaceship,"astronaut Josh Kutryk told Space.com in a phone interview from nearby the press center here.
During Sunday's launch simulation exercise,"We'll do a series of test items where we're basically putting power on to the Atlas V and Starliner stack on Pad 41," Kutryk said."We're looking into some of these systems, testing the comm system, for example, and just making sure we're all completely ready to go."
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams exit the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a mission dress rehearsal on Friday, April 26, 2024."I'll be talking to them , talking to their personnel who are strapping them in, making sure that the complex systems are working, and also that all this simple stuff is working," Kutryk said.