Atlanta-Area Astronaut to Test Fly Commercial Capsule

Credit: NASA

An Atlanta resident and NASA astronaut has been tapped by the agency to help two private companies develop and test their manned spacecraft.

Eric Boe, who went to space on two separate Space Shuttle missions, will help Boeing and SpaceX with the final stages of the development of the Crew Dragon and CST-100 capsules, Atlanta Business Chronicle reports. Boe and fellow astronauts Robert Behnken, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams will take the commercial capsules up for their maiden flights to ensure all systems are working as intended.

Boe was raised in the Atlanta area and graduated from Georgia Tech with a Master of Science in electrical engineering in 1997. He is a Colonel in the Air Force with over 4,000 hours in the air.

Both Boeing and SpaceX’s contracts with NASA require the companies to successfully complete a flight test with at least one NASA astronaut on board, the Chronicle says. It is hoped that the vehicles can successfully ferry crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station; currently, the only way to and from the station is on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon has completed six successful resupply missions to the International Space Station but lost a seventh vehicle on June 28.