{"id":13666,"date":"2018-08-02T22:59:26","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T14:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-last-shuttle-commander-to-helm-test-flight-of-boeing-crew-capsule\/"},"modified":"2018-08-02T22:59:26","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T14:59:26","slug":"nasas-last-shuttle-commander-to-helm-test-flight-of-boeing-crew-capsule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-last-shuttle-commander-to-helm-test-flight-of-boeing-crew-capsule\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s last shuttle commander to helm test flight of Boeing crew capsule"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Chris Ferguson aboard the shuttle Atlantis\u2019 flight deck during the STS-135 mission in July 2011. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s last space shuttle commander \u2014 former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Chris Ferguson \u2014 will fly Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule on its first piloted test mission to the International Space Station next year.<\/p>\n

Now a Boeing employee, Ferguson will make his fourth trip into space after logging more than 40 days in orbit on three space shuttle missions. The Washington Post first reported Ferguson\u2019s assignment to the mission last week, and Boeing has confirmed he will fly on the CST-100 Starliner\u2019s first crew test flight scheduled for mid-2019.<\/p>\n

Ferguson, 56, will likely be joined by two NASA astronauts on the mission. Their identities will be announced Friday in a ceremony at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston, headquarters for agency\u2019s astronaut corps.<\/p>\n

NASA is also expected to announce crews for the first flight of SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon spacecraft with astronauts on-board, plus which astronauts will fly on the first \u201cpost-certification\u201d missions by both commercially-developed vehicles on operational crew rotation flights to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

Boeing and SpaceX are developing the CST-100 Starliner and Crew Dragon spacecraft under multibillion-dollar contracts with NASA.<\/p>\n

Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner, featuring a reusable crew module, will launch on United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets and return to landings in the Western United States with the aid of parachutes and airbags. SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon will launch on the company\u2019s own Falcon 9 boosters, and splash down in the ocean under parachutes at the end of each mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are really excited that on Friday we\u2019ll be out in Houston for the upcoming astronaut announcement,\u201d said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner.<\/p>\n

Ferguson flew F-14 Tomcat airplanes off aircraft carriers in the Navy, and graduated from the service\u2019s Top Gun school for fighter pilots before his selection as a NASA astronaut in 1998.<\/p>\n

He piloted the STS-115 mission by the shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station in September 2006, then commanded two more spaceflights \u2014 aboard the shuttle Endeavour in November 2008 on the STS-126 mission, and the final flight of the storied 30-year program aboard Atlantis\u2019s STS-135 mission in July 2011.<\/p>\n

Ferguson retired from the space agency several months after guiding Atlantis back to Earth on its last flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the last day (of Atlantis\u2019s STS-135 mission), I tried to make it a point to say goodbye to every shift (in mission control) because I knew when they left the control center it was never going to be the same for them, so we tried to make it special for them,\u201d Ferguson said in a 2016 interview with Spaceflight Now. \u201cAfter the last goodbye, I thought, you know what? I have no idea where I\u2019m going to be in a month. I knew we had all the post-flight stuff to do, but I had no idea what my future held. Am I going to go teach at college? What am I going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

He found a job at Boeing, which announced in 2010 it was developing the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft in partnership with NASA\u2019s commercial crew program, aimed at ending U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz vehicles for crew access to the space station in the post-shuttle era.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Boeing test pilot Chris Ferguson is helped into his spacesuit ahead of emergency egress training at United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas 5 launch pad at Cape Canaveral in June. Credit: NASA\/Kim Shiflett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cNow I find myself right back in the fight again, right back in the fight as a stakeholder in making sure that we\u2019re successful,\u201d Ferguson said in 2016.<\/p>\n

The fighter pilot-turned-astronaut-turned-manager will have a renaissance of his flying career on the CST-100 Starliner\u2019s crew test flight, which is now scheduled for mid-2019 after an unpiloted demo mission late this year or early next year.<\/p>\n

Ferguson\u2019s shuttle crew in 2011 left a U.S. flag on the space station for the next astronauts launched from U.S. soil to bring home.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Washington Post, Ferguson said the competition between Boeing and SpaceX is \u201csort of grown-up capture the flag \u2026 It probably has a lot more significance to me than it does to, say, somebody from our competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Ferguson aboard the shuttle Atlantis\u2019 flight deck during the STS-135 mission in July 2011. Credit: NASA NASA\u2019s last space shuttle commander \u2014 former U.S. Navy fighter pilot Chris Ferguson \u2014 will fly Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule on its first piloted test mission to the International Space Station next year. Now a Boeing employee, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1668,724,670,2051,524,1565,1305,1545],"class_list":["post-13666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astronauts","tag-atlas-5","tag-boeing","tag-chris-ferguson","tag-commercial-crew","tag-cst-100","tag-cst-100-crew-flight-test","tag-human-spaceflight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}