NASA's manned mission to ISS: Boeing CST-100 Starliner to carry astronauts

A crew of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts, including Sunita Williams, will be travelling to the International Space Station (ISS) in a private spacecraft - Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner. In 2011, NASA's last manned mission to ISS was launched on an Atlantis spacecraft and this will be the next in last 5 years. Four astronauts have been selected for the next manned mission – Sunita Williams, Eric Boe, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. 

“These simulators have touchscreen displays, which means they are more versatile than previous spacecraft trainers,” Williams said in a statement. NASA selected four astronauts- Williams, Boe, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to train for test flights aboard the Starliner ?and SpaceX Crew Dragon to the ISS. (Also read. NASA finds how moon got mysterious tattoos?)

“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 also added. As the flight assignments have not been set so all the four of astronauts are rehearsing for the starliner and Crew Dragon test flights to the space station.

For astronauts they spend hours training in simulators for every minute they fly in space so they become familiar that way to deal with any unusual events. This is how simulators have been playing a significant role for astronauts in training. (Also read. Sunita Williams trains with gen-next spaceflight simulators)