Miss England Takes Controls of Boeing’s New Astronaut Spaceship
Jessica Gagan, who was crowned Miss England earlier this year, recently had the opportunity to try out Boeing’s Starliner simulator at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Orlando. Boeing officials shared the news on X (formerly Twitter). Starliner is currently preparing for a test mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which is scheduled for April 2024 after facing engineering delays.
The post also mentioned NASA astronaut Suni Williams, who will be piloting the Boeing Crew Flight Test of Starliner in 2024 alongside NASA commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore. The post tagged Williams and humorously suggested that she might have a new trainee.
Gagan, 27, recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Liverpool, according to the Miss England website. After her Miss England duties, she plans to pursue a master’s degree. It is worth noting that Miss England winners often engage in charitable work and initiatives to promote goodwill.
Related: 7 Key Lessons Learned from the International Space Station
Prior to her visit to the Boeing Starliner simulator, Gagan was invited to speak at the Ascend conference in Las Vegas, where she discussed how the ISS can inspire students to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).
During her visit to Boeing in Orlando, Gagan will collaborate with the social media team to create content promoting the involvement of STEM subjects in the aerospace industry, as reported by the Miss England website. Her agenda also includes a tour of Boeing’s facilities, a panel discussion with Redwire Space, and the possibility of witnessing the SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the ISS, which is scheduled to launch from KSC on November 7.
“This trip is a dream come true for an aerospace engineer like myself,” Gagan stated on the Miss England website. “As one of the few girls studying aerospace engineering at my university, I made it my mission to showcase the excitement of the sector and break stereotypes about engineers and what they look like, which eventually led me to become Miss England. The rest is history.”
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has undergone two uncrewed test flights in 2019 and 2022. The first flight did not reach the ISS as planned due to various reasons, but the 2022 mission successfully completed the journey to and from Earth. Once Starliner is certified for operational crew missions, it will become NASA’s second option for sending astronauts to the ISS under the Commercial Crew Program. The other company, SpaceX, has been conducting crewed missions to the ISS since 2020.
