Watch Boeing launch its new passenger spacecraft on its first flight to the space station

(NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Tomorrow morning, December 20th, Boeing is poised to launch its brand-new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, from Florida, sending it to the International Space Station on top of an Atlas V rocket. The capsule won’t have any people inside, but it’ll be the first flight of the vehicle, meant to prove that future passengers will be safe when they do board the Starliner for the first time next year.
The Starliner will attempt to dock with the space station about a day after launch, a key maneuver it will have to perform to deliver future crews to the orbiting lab. It’ll then spend a week attached to the ISS before detaching and coming back home. That’s when it’ll have to survive the descent through Earth’s atmosphere and land in…

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