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
so charles, what does this mean for the astronauts on board right now for, for, for bucha and sonny, what are they doing there? they re disappointed, but they have they have a board are not a board, but they have checks that they have to do so. there are systems that they have to save in the vehicle itself. as you go through the countdown if i can relate this to shuttle, because again, i want to make sure everybody understands. i don t nothing about starliner but it s a spacecraft and most spacecraft are similar in nature starliner is in many ways very similar to the shuttle in terms of systems the way the crew enter or exit. this is a pilots spacecraft. it s it s gotta hand controllers, it s not a, it s not a push button. do everything on the screen like like the like the crew dragon so my guess is there are a lot of systems, so they will have to safe systems that were set in the position of being ready to ready for a launch and that stuff that butch and sunny