Boeing accommodated NASA astronauts at its St. Louis facility to aid in the preparations for the launch, flight and return operations aboard the company’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, the space agency said April 27.
Stephanie Martin and Steven Siceloff write that commercial crew astronauts Suni Williams and Eric Boe tested the cloud-based training simulators designed to run astronauts and mission controllers through all phases of a mission.
Williams said the touchscreen displays on the simulators facilitate versatility in training.
“We can run multiple simulations by just changing software and then put that same software into a bigger crew simulator, which we will use to train the whole crew for a spaceflight,” she added.
NASA said it will send the Boeing part-task trainers to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for the daily practice of astronauts.
A simulator for the full Starliner flight deck will also eventually be shipped to Johnson, the space agency noted.
According to NASA, Boe and Williams have been selected alongside Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley for test flight training aboard the Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The two spacecraft are slated to transport crew to and from the International Space Station.