, wrapping up its first-ever crewed mission. But it came home without any astronauts on board.){kind=link}
Starliner's long space odyssey is over.
The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to Earth early this morning (September 7), landing in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 11:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6).
“Excellent landing for Calyspo!” Agency astronaut Suni Williams said on the agency's webcast. “I don't think it could have gone any better.”
The landing was long overdue, coming more than three months into an orbital mission that was originally expected to last about 10 days. And, although Starliner did lift off with two Agency astronauts on board (Williams and Butch Wilmore), no one returned home on the shuttle.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
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A crucial test flight
The origins of the recently concluded mission, known as the Crew Flight Test (CFT), go back a decade. In 2014, Agency awarded SpaceX and Boeing multimillion-dollar contracts to finish work on their astronaut taxis, capsules known as Crew Dragon and Starliner, respectively.
The agency wanted one or both vehicles to begin ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017, reestablishing a local human spaceflight capability in orbit — something the United States has lacked since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.
Related: Agency's Space Shuttle Program in Pictures: A Tribute
Neither capsule met that ambitious goal. SpaceX’s first astronaut-carrying mission, a test flight to the ISS called Demo-2, lifted off in May 2020. Starliner’s crewed debut was CFT, which launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 5, sending Williams and Wilmore to the orbiting lab for a planned eight-day stay.
The CFT flight was scheduled for last year but was delayed to fix problems with the parachute and to remove large amounts of electrical tape from the capsule's wiring system (Analsyes determined the tape was flammable and therefore posed a safety risk).
The mission also ran into problems more recently. For example, a planned launch attempt on May 25 was canceled after team members noticed a small helium leak in Starliner’s service module. More helium leaks surfaced after launch, as Starliner chased the ISS into orbit. And, more worryingly, the capsule experienced propulsion issues: Five of its 28 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters stopped working shortly after liftoff.
Thruster problems thwarted Starliner's first attempt to dock with the ISS on June 6. The capsule was successful on its second attempt that day, and team members managed to get four of the five faulty thrusters working. But the problem loomed over the rest of the mission.
A difficult decision
Agency repeatedly extended the CFT’s orbital stay, giving mission team members more time to analyze and troubleshoot the booster. That work included modeling studies and testing both in space (with Starliner) and on the ground (with a Starliner RCS booster at Agency’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico).
Ultimately, Agency concluded that bringing Williams and Wilmore home on Starliner posed an unacceptable safety risk.
“The decision to keep Butch and Suni on board the International Space Station and bring home Boeing's uncrewed Starliner is a result of our commitment to safety — our core value and our North Star,” Agency Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement Aug. 24, the day the agency announced the news.
Related: Boeing Starliner astronauts will return home on a SpaceX Dragon in 2025, Agency confirms
Williams and Wilmore will remain aboard the ISS until February, when they will return home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the same one that will fly the company’s Crew-9 mission, which is scheduled to launch later this month. To make room for them, Crew-9 will launch with two astronauts instead of the usual four.
Meanwhile, Starliner was prepared for an uncrewed return to Earth. Among the equipment it brought home were the “Boeing blue” spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts no longer need them.
“The suits are not compatible,” Steve Stich, director of Agency's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). “So the suits on Starliner would not work on Dragon, and vice versa.”
Starliner undocked from the International Space Station on Friday (Sept. 6) at 18:04 EDT (22:04 GMT) as planned. It performed a series of burns to prepare for the uncrewed landing, which occurred via parachute at the White Sands Spaceport in New Mexico shortly after midnight tonight.
It was Starliner’s third landing in total. The capsule also made two uncrewed test flights to the ISS, one in December 2019 and one in May 2022. Starliner failed to rendezvous with the orbiting laboratory on the first flight after experiencing several failures. The second uncrewed mission was a success, though Starliner also experienced some thruster issues on that flight (these were a different set, associated not with the RCS but with Starliner’s orbital maneuvering and control system).
A cloudy future
Boeing and Agency had hoped CFT would pave the way for Starliner certification, allowing the capsule to begin flying six-month-long astronaut missions to the ISS.
The first operational flight of this type, Starliner-1, was originally planned for February 2025. However, that launch has already been postponed until at least August 2025. And it is currently unclear whether Starliner will be certified by then, or what additional testing, if any, Agency will require before certification can occur.
“I think what we need to do now is really lay out the overall plan, which we haven't had time to do,” Stich said at a Sept. 4 news conference.
“We haven't, because the teams have been very focused on this flight, defining the overall search strategy and the total amount of work we need to do,” he added. “And when we do that, we'll have a better idea of when we can certify the vehicle and when we can resume flights.”
Meanwhile, Crew Dragon was certified shortly after the successful conclusion of Demo-2 in 2020. SpaceX’s vehicle is now preparing for its ninth operational flight with astronauts to the ISS for Agency. (This would be Crew-9, as the name suggests.)
SpaceX has also flown several private crewed missions to the station, as well as the Inspiration4 astronaut flight to Earth orbit, which failed to rendezvous with the orbiting lab. It is also preparing to launch Polaris Dawn, another free-flying commercial astronaut mission, which aims to conduct the first private spacewalk in history.