NASA is preparing for a planned May launch of an Atlas-V rocket, built in Alabama. The booster is set to carry the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule to the International Space Station. Once the vehicle docks with the orbiting outpost, there will be a meeting of two “penguins."Here’s an explanation…Astronaut Sunita Williams will command the mission of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft nicknamed “Calypso” for famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau’s research ship. A current member of the International Space Station crew is astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson. Around NASA, they’re both known as “penguins.” It comes from their shared astronaut class. The space agency picks groups of candidates to train for missions in orbit. These groups are known as classes, and each class gets a nickname. Williams and Dyson were both members of the class of 1998, which are called “penguins.”The story goes, the nickname came about because the candidates were selected in 1998, which was so late in the life of the Space Shuttle program, they were considered less likely to fly in space. Classmate, astronaut Clayton Anderson, another “penguin,” explains it further.“Penguins are all dressed up with no place to go,” said Anderson. (They’re) flightless and more marketable than ‘do-do’s.’ We picked ‘penguins’ rather than let the 1996 stick us with ‘do-do’s.’” Another NASA tradition allows the previous astronaut class to name the latest batch of rookies. The 1996 class, Anderson referred to, were known as the “sardines.”Anderson’s comments are on a signed astronaut class photograph that currently hangs on the wall of my office at Alabama Public Radio.Along with Sunita Williams and Tracy Caldwell-Dyson meeting up in space as reunited “penguins,” the orbiting laboratory is the current home of a robotic cargo carrier named for another astronaut from the class 1998. Patricia Hilliard was killed in a 2001 plane crash before flying to space. Northrop-Grumman builds the automated supply ships, and names each one after a notable person in the space program. One was dubbed the “S.S. John Glenn,” for America’s first astronaut in orbit. Another is called the “S.S. Katherine Johnson,” the NASA mathematician depicted in the motion picture “Hidden Figures.” Ther current cargo ship docked to the International Space Station is called “S.S. Patty Hilliard.”The Atlas-V rocket set to carry the Boeing Starliner capsule to orbit was built at the United Launch Alliance factory in Decatur. It will be the first such rocket to carry astronauts.

MONOPOLY has unveiled a new version of the classic board game that features Birmingham, making it the first time that an authorized version of the game has been based in Alabama.

The Better Business Bureau of North Alabama is a non-profit who has been hosting the annual ‘Shred Day’s.’ The event will consist of four opportunities across the state each held on a Saturday throughout the months of April and May.

The Alabama Senate advanced legislation aimed at strengthening the state's weak open records law by setting deadlines to respond to requests to view public documents.

The Alabama Supreme Court has authorized the execution of a man convicted of killing a delivery driver who stopped at an ATM. Justices granted the Alabama attorney general's request to authorize an execution date for Keith Edmund Gavin. Governor Kay Ivey will set the day of the execution, which will be carried out by lethal injection.

An Alabama Senate committee voted down a bill that would have required the public release of police body-worn camera video and dash camera footage.

Alabama plans to buy the Foley Beach Express Bridge and eliminate tolls to drive across it. The Alabama Department of Transportation plans to purchase the bridge from the Baldwin County Bridge Company for $57 million. The thoroughfare is a private toll bridge that provides an alternate route to state beaches.

Thousands of workers at Tuscaloosa’s Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will vote next month on whether they want to be represented by the United Auto Workers union.

The families of Alabama prison inmates have filed lawsuits alleging that organs were harvested from the bodies of dead inmates, often against the wishes of relatives. CNN and the Courthouse News Service report Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm and the University of Alabama Birmingham are named in the suits.

When a deadly explosion destroyed BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 134 million gallons of crude erupted into the sea over the next three months — and tens of thousands of ordinary people were hired to help clean up environmental devastation from the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The aftermath of exposure of chemicals called oil dispersants was at the heart of Alabama Public Radio’s national award-winning documentary “Oil and Water: 10 Years Later.”

The Justice Department is ramping up its efforts to reduce violent crime in the U.S., launching a specialized gun intelligence center in Chicago and expanding task forces to curb carjackings. Alabama will be part of that effort.

A new book out is gathering lots of interest in South Alabama. It’s by a 91-year-old woman who tells the stories of a difficult childhood in Fairhope. APR visits with the writer as she retraces steps from her long life.