Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore must have heaved a sigh of relief when they opened the hatch and floated into the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6 2024. It was the first time the Starliner spacecraft they arrived on had ever carried people.
Built by aerospace manufacturing giant Boeing, Starliner had become the second commercial spacecraft to carry astronauts to the ISS after the Crew Dragon, built by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, which has already completed eight crew transportation flights to the orbiting outpost.
