The Starliner has landed.
Boeing’s spacecraft is finally back home, but the two NASA astronauts who flew it to the International Space Station in June are still in orbit.
Due to problems with Starliner’s propulsion system during its approach to the space station in June, NASA officials decided not to put astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on Starliner for the return trip. They will spend another five months on the space station as part of the crew before returning to Earth around February in a spacecraft built and operated by SpaceX.
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Starliner’s undocking and atmospheric reentry went largely smoothly. So did the capsule’s parachute-equipped landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:01 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday (10:01 p.m. local time on Friday), bolstering Boeing officials’ earlier assertions that the company’s vehicle was safe for astronauts.
“It would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board, if we had Butch and Suni on board,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said during a news conference early Saturday morning after the landing.
But the difficulties of the mission and the two astronauts’ long stay in space have left Boeing feeling embarrassed, and could raise uncertainty about how much the company is willing to continue investing in the Starliner program.
During the press conference, Stich referred to the next Starliner flight as Starliner-1, the designation of the first operational mission after NASA certifies the vehicle as ready to carry four-person crews to and from the space station.
He spoke about the changes that Boeing’s engineering teams have been making to come up with the changes needed for the next Starliner flight, specifically how to prevent the boosters from overheating.
“That work has already begun, and that’s really the path to Starliner-1,” Stich said. He also said engineers need to dig into the data collected during the test flight before they can determine a plan and timeline.
NASA initially announced that two senior Boeing space officials would participate in Saturday’s news conference, but they subsequently did not. “They left it up to NASA to represent the mission,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy director of NASA’s Space Mission Directorate.
Boeing released a statement quoting Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Starliner.
“I want to recognize the work that the Starliner teams have done to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, reentry and landing,” he said. “We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program.”
Montalbano said Boeing played a key role in the International Space Station, the commercial crew program with Starliner and in the production of the core stage of the new Space Launch System. “Their work is critical to our success, and we expect to continue all three of those programs,” he said.
Before the vehicle was released, Williams, who had named it Calypso a few years earlier, thanked the control team.
“It’s time to bring Calypso home,” she said. “We’re behind you and you can do this. Bring her back to Earth. Good luck.”
Chloe Mehring, the flight director, thanked the astronauts for years of preparation for this flight. “We remember every setback and every revelation with you,” Mehring said. “The teams on the ground have worked countless hours over the past weeks, months and, for a group of us, years to bring Calypso back, and we are ready today.”
Starliner began its journey back to Earth by retracting hooks that had held it securely to the space station. Springs on the spacecraft then pushed it away from the docking port. By this point, it was about 260 miles above central China.
A series of booster blasts gently pushed Starliner up and over the space station. At higher altitudes, it moved more slowly than the space station, and the distance between them grew rapidly.
That was a dull start to the end for the mission, which launched in June on a test flight that marked the first time Starliner has carried humans into orbit. The flight was intended as a final test before NASA certified the spacecraft for annual missions ferrying astronauts to and from the space station.
The vehicle’s propulsion system encountered problems during its approach to the space station, including several stiff thrusters and leaks of helium, a gas used to propel fuel in the weightlessness of orbit. While Starliner successfully docked, the cause of the problems remains unclear, and NASA officials decided it would be safer for Starliner to return without anyone on board.
As it moved into position to reenter the atmosphere, Starliner test fired 12 thrusters on the crew capsule portion of the spacecraft. One failed, but that’s okay because there are two redundant systems with six thrusters each.
“This one never fired for some reason,” Stich said.
However, it was vital that the redundant thruster did its job to ensure the Starliner survived in the scorching atmosphere.
Flight controllers also fired 10 of the thrusters into the service module, the cylindrical section beneath the crew capsule, and they all worked as expected.
At 11:17 p.m., Starliner’s big thrusters fired for nearly a minute to drop Starliner out of orbit. It then jettisoned its service module — the cylindrical piece beneath the crew capsule that held the troublesome thrusters.
The crew capsule returned to Earth’s atmosphere via the central Pacific Ocean and then traveled northeast, crossing northwestern Mexico and eventually landing in the Chihuahuan Desert.
People in New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico shared videos on the social network X of the heated spacecraft hurtling through the night sky. Shortly after, the Starliner descended under three parachutes, its final impact with the desert floor cushioned by airbags on the capsule’s underside.
The two Starliner astronauts the spacecraft leaves behind will become full members of the space station crew. NASA calls each crew rotation an “expedition,” and Williams and Wilmore will now be part of Expedition 72.
Later this month, two other astronauts, NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, will launch to the space station in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. They will also be part of Expedition 72.
To accommodate Williams and Wilmore on the return trip to Earth next year, two other NASA astronauts scheduled to participate in Expedition 72 — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — were dropped from the mission, known as Crew 9.
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