Starliner Is Back on Earth, Sans Crew

Boeing's first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky. Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness, per the AP. It was an uneventful close to a drama that began with the June launch of Boeing's long-delayed crew debut and quickly escalated into a dragged-out cliffhanger of a mission stricken by thruster failures and helium leaks.

• For months, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams' return was in question as engineers struggled to understand the capsule's problems. Boeing insisted after extensive testing that Starliner was safe to bring the two home, but NASA disagreed and booked a flight with SpaceX instead. Their SpaceX ride won't launch until the end of this month, which means they'll be up there until February—more than eight months after blasting off on what should have been a quick trip. Wilmore and Williams should have flown Starliner back to Earth by mid-June, a week after launching in it.

• Instead, with fresh software updates, the fully automated capsule left with their empty seats and blue spacesuits, along with some old station equipment. "She's on her way home," Williams radioed as the white and blue-trimmed capsule undocked from the space station 260 miles over China and disappeared into the black void. Williams stayed up late to see how everything turned out. "A good landing, pretty awesome," said Boeing's Mission Control.
• NASA officials stressed that the space agency remains committed to having two competing US companies transporting astronauts. The goal is for SpaceX and Boeing to take turns launching crews—one a year per company—until the space station is abandoned in 2030, right before its fiery reentry. That doesn't give Boeing much time to catch up, but the company intends to push forward with Starliner, according to NASA. The agency's commercial crew program manager, Steve Stich, said post-landing it's too early to know when the next Starliner flight with astronauts might occur. "It will take a little time to determine the path forward," he said. More here.

(More Starliner stories.)