Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
The eleventh Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, premieres, starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, alongside original trilogy stars Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, Ian McDiarmid, and Harrison Ford (Carrie Fisher appears pothumously in scenes originally filmed for, but cut from, The Force Awakens in 2015). Perhaps inevitably, given the late 2010s’ tendency to politicize popular culture and its followers, and with the weight of fan expectations of a satisfying conclusion to the saga on it, the film proves somewhat controversial. Shortly after its release, work on future Star Wars feature films at Disney-owned Lucasfilm comes to a halt, and the franchise becomes a mainstay of Disney’s streaming video service.
The Starliner’s maiden voyage
In development since 2010, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner space vehicle lifts off atop an Atlas V rocket on its first flight, scheduled to take it to the International Space Station. A software and sensor mishap after second stage separation results in the vehicle putting itself into an orbit unable to reach the station, after burning enough fuel to make a major orbital correction impossible. Boeing and NASA settle on an alternate flight plan to allow for other engineering tests in orbit before the vehicle’s planned return to Earth on land a few days later. There is no crew aboard for this first flight, though Boeing contends that astronauts aboard might have been able to override the engineering problems that resulted in the incorrect orbital insertion.