Boeing’s first manned space mission ended Friday night with the landing of an empty capsule and two test pilots stranded in space, where they will remain until next year because the POT He considered his return to be too risky.
Six hours after launching from the International Space Station, the Starliner capsule landed by parachute at the White Sands Missile Test Range in New Mexico and descended on autopilot into the darkness of the desert.
It was an uneventful end to a drama that began with the June launch of Starliner’s long-delayed first crewed mission, which quickly turned into a cliffhanger marred by thruster failures and helium leaks. For months, the return of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was in doubt as engineers tried to understand the capsule’s problems.
After extensive testing, Boeing insisted the Starliner was safe to bring them back to Earth, but NASA disagreed and booked a flight with SpaceX instead. But that capsule won’t launch until later this month, meaning they’ll be stuck in the orbiting lab until February — more than eight months after embarking on what was supposed to be a quick trip.
Wilmore and Williams were due to return aboard the Starliner in mid-June, a week after they had departed. But their journey to the space station was marred by a cascade of thruster problems and a loss of helium, and NASA ultimately decided that their return aboard the same aircraft was too risky.
So, with new software updates, the fully automated capsule set off with empty seats and its blue spacesuits, along with some old equipment from the orbital outpost.
“It’s on its way home,” Williams radioed as the blue-and-white spacecraft undocked from the station 260 miles (420 kilometers) above China and disappeared into the black void.
Williams stayed up late to see the story unfold. “A nice landing, pretty impressive,” Boeing Mission Control said.
Cameras on the ISS and a pair of NASA aircraft captured the capsule as a streak of white approaching landing, prompting cheers and applause.
The journey was capped by delays and setbacks. After the space shuttles were retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to take astronauts into space. Boeing ran into so many problems on its first unmanned test flight in 2019 that it had to do it again. That time, in 2022, it revealed even more flaws, and the cost of repairs exceeded $1 billion.
SpaceX’s crewed flight later this month will be NASA’s 10th since 2020. The Dragon capsule will blast off for a six-month mission with just two people on board, as two of the seats will be reserved for Wilmore and Williams’ return to Earth.
As veteran astronauts and retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams anticipated obstacles on the test flight. In space, they have been busy helping with repairs and experiments, and now they are part of the orbiting laboratory’s permanent crew alongside the seven people already on board.