breaking news hello everyone. thanks for joining me on. alison chemla, radha, and for fredricka whitfield, we have an exciting program for you today because within the next half an hour, we expect to witness the first ever boeing starliner spacecraft launched from cape canaveral, florida to the international space station. this is not a practice run this its launch has to american astronauts on board but officials and spectators are holding their breath a bit because this mission was already postponed a few times, veteran nasa astronauts, butch wilmore and suni williams are on board. and boeing is trying with this to compete with its rivals space x as nasa tries to collaborate with private industry partners. if successful, suni williams would become the first woman aboard any crewed test flight like this years of work has gone into this moment and it has not been without setbacks, as i ve mentioned. so let s bring in space and defense correspondent kristin fisher. she
nasa s golden prime contract tractor for so many years during the shuttle program, was going to beat spacex s crew dragon to flying astronauts to the international space station. so many nasa astronauts back then wanted to be assigned the boeing missions, not spacex, that clearly turned out to be dead wrong. i mean, since then, spacex s flown 13 crewed missions to the international space hey, station, boeing starliner, still has yet to get off the ground. so yes not what boeing wanted, but this could not be a boeing issue, right? i mean, the rocket itself that propels the boeing starliner spacecraft into space is designed by a different company, the united launch alliance. and that first scrub back in may was caused by an issue with the rocket, not boeing s starliner spacecraft. so yes it s a setback for boeing, but it s also potentially not even boeing s fault here. now granted, they ve had tons of technical and other issues and engineering problems along the