Astronauts would have been fine on Boeing's Starliner during landing, NASA says

When it comes to human lives, better to err on the side of caution.

Josh Dinner, 09/10/24

After more than three months in space, Starliner's 10-day Crew Flight Test (CFT) has finally concluded.

The Boeing spacecraft made a successful landing over the weekend, parachuting to a soft touchdown in the dark desert night of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) Saturday (Sep. 7). The return marked an end to a long-delayed and issue-ridden mission, which launched with two NASA astronauts, but returned with none. It turns out they would have been totally fine.

Despite the issues it experienced on its flight up to the International Space Station (ISS), Starliner's uncrewed landing performed as expected, with the spacecraft touching down precisely as NASA and Boeing had designed for its delayed return. "If we'd have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we would have followed the same back away sequence from the space station, the same deorbit burn and executed the same entry. And so it would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, during a post-landing press conference. But, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Boeing and NASA spent the past three months performing tests in White Sands, trying to recreate and understand the thruster issues Starliner experienced in space. "It's always hard to have that retrospective look," Stich said after Starliner's return, adding, "if we'd had a model that would have predicted what we saw tonight perfectly, yeah, it looks like an easy decision to go say we could have had a crewed fight, but we didn't have that."

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Starliner on June 4, expecting to spend a little more than a week on orbit. The CFT mission was to be Starliner's final qualifying flight before entering into operational rotation as a crew transport to the ISS. However, thruster issues as the spacecraft approached the ISS led to a three-month delay in Starliner's return, which it ultimately did without astronauts onboard. 

NASA announced its decision for Starliner to return uncrewed at the end of August, reassigning Wilmore and Williams as part of ISS Expedition 71. That required the agency to designate two empty seats aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft launching SpaceX's Crew-9 astronaut mission for NASA later this month so that Wilmore and Williams can ride home in them at the end of the Crew-9 rotation in February.

That means by the time they come home, instead of ten days in space, the duo will have spent ten months aboard the station. 

A path forward for Starliner is currently unclear. The spacecraft was slated to begin six-month crew ration missions to the ISS starting in February next year, but that has already been pushed back to August 2025, at the earliest.

"I want to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing," Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program said in a statement. "We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program."


Josh Dinner, writer, is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. …

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NASA finally gives Boeing Starliner capsule a return date. But it will fly home without its crew

Jackie Wattles, CNN, 08/30/24

After 12 weeks in space, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is finally set to return home from the International Space Station on September 6 — albeit without its two-person crew.

The troubled spacecraft will undock from the orbiting laboratory around 6 p.m. ET, and it will spend about six hours maneuvering closer to home before landing around midnight in New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor.

The astronauts who rode aboard Starliner to the space station on June 5, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will remain on board the orbiting laboratory.

NASA announced on August 24 that experts were wary of gas leaks and issues with the Starliner capsule’s propulsion system, leading the agency to determine the spacecraft is not safe enough to finish its mission with crew on board.

“The uncrewed Starliner spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return with flight controllers at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida,” according to a NASA update posted Thursday. “Teams on the ground are able to remotely command the spacecraft if needed through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking, re-entry, and parachute-assisted landing in the southwest United States.”

How the Starliner vehicle performs during its return trip could be crucial to the future of the overall Boeing program.

If the spacecraft experiences a mishap or NASA ultimately decides not to certify the vehicle for human spaceflight — a step that would set up the vehicle to make routine trips to orbit — it would mark yet another blow to Boeing’s already damaged reputation.

Repeating this test flight and implementing redesigns on Starliner could cost the company millions of dollars — on top of the roughly $1.5 billion the company has already recorded in losses on the Starliner program.

“All of us really wanted to complete the (Boeing Starliner) test flight with crew, and I think unanimously we’re disappointed not to be able to do that,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said last week. But “you don’t want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision.”