Astronauts thrilled to be making first piloted flight aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft
CBSN
Two veteran astronauts flew to the Kennedy Space Center Thursday afternoon to prepare for the first piloted launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, a long-awaited flight running years behind schedule after two uncrewed test flights and extensive work to resolve a variety of technical problems.
Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams, two of NASA's most seasoned astronauts with four previous spaceflights, 11 spacewalks and 500 days in orbit between then, landed at the spaceport's 3-mile-long runway in T-38 jet trainers after a flight from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"We love Florida. We love the Kennedy Space Center, because this is where you launch humans into space," an ebullient Wilmore told reporters on the runway. "In less than two weeks, the next flight we take we'll be laying on our backs and (launching) into the heavens."
Nine bodies were found Wednesday in a northern Mexican state reeling from a wave of drug cartel-related violence, authorities said, in the second such discovery in as many days. A homicide investigation was launched after the bodies of nine men were found in the city of Morelos in Zacatecas, the state prosecutor's office said.
Alabama has scheduled a date for the upcoming execution of Alan Eugene Miller, a convicted murderer who, after surviving a previous execution attempt, is set to become the second inmate ever put to death using nitrogen gas in the United States. Nitrogen hypoxia is a controversial method allowed only in a handful of U.S. states that essentially aims to asphyxiate the prisoner with a gas mask devoid of oxygen.