Q&A with John Elbon, VP and general manager of Boeing’s space exploration division

Spare parts warehoused in the the United States and Russia will help Boeing finish assembly of a third space station docking port to receive arriving astronauts aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules, replacing a unit lost in a Falcon 9 launch failure last year.

The final year of launches in the current breed of Global Positioning System navigation satellites kicks off Wednesday afternoon aboard a Delta 4 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

On top of an Atlas rocket, the place where orbital spaceflight for American astronauts began, will sit Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to launch humans into space starting next year.