Boeing’s Starliner returned to Earth on Saturday without the astronauts who rode it up to the International Space Station, as NASA deemed the journey too risky.
After years of delays, Starliner launched in June for an approximately week-long test flight — a final shakedown before being certified to rotate personnel to and from the orbital laboratory.
However, unforeseen rocket problems and helium leaks en route to the ISS hampered those plans, and NASA ultimately determined it was safer to return crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a competitor SpaceX Crew Dragon, though they will have to wait until February 2025.
The Boeing capsule arrived at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 0401 GMT on Saturday, using parachutes and airbags to slow its descent after leaving the International Space Station nearly six hours earlier.
As it sped red-hot over the night sky, ground teams reported hearing loud booms. The spacecraft experienced temperatures of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius) during atmospheric reentry.
NASA praised Boeing during a post-flight press briefing in which industry representatives were noticeably missing.
“It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.”
Nonetheless, he noted that certain new concerns had emerged, such as the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system.
He added that it was too early to speculate on whether Starliner’s next voyage, scheduled for August next year, would be crewed, stating that NASA needed time to examine the data gathered and determine what adjustments were required to both the ship’s architecture and the way it is flown.
Before the return leg, Boeing conducted significant ground testing to address technical issues encountered during the Starliner’s ascent, then assured — both publicly and privately — that the astronauts could be safely returned home. In the end, NASA disagreed.
Asked whether he stood by that decision, NASA’s Stich said: “It’s always hard to have that retrospective look. We made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time and based on our knowledge of the thrusters and based on the modeling that we had.”
History of setbacks
Even without a crew aboard, the stakes were enormous for Boeing, the century-old aerospace behemoth.
With its reputation already tarnished by safety worries over its commercial jets, its long-term chances for crewed space missions were uncertain.
Shortly after undocking, Starliner performed a massive “breakout burn” to quickly clear it from the station and eliminate any possibility of collision – a maneuver that would have been unnecessary if crew were present to take manual control if needed.
Mission teams then thoroughly tested the thrusters required for the key “deorbit burn” that guided the capsule onto its reentry course around 40 minutes before impact.
Despite widespread expectations that Starliner would land successfully, as it has in two previous uncrewed tests, Boeing’s development remains behind schedule.
NASA awarded multibillion-dollar contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to create aircraft to transport personnel to and from the ISS, after the Space Shuttle program ended, leaving the US space agency dependent on Russian rockets.
Despite being considered the underdog, Elon Musk’s SpaceX outperformed Boeing and has successfully launched hundreds of people since 2020.
Meanwhile, the Starliner program has experienced multiple failures, including a software malfunction that prevented the capsule from rendezvousing with the ISS during its first uncrewed test flight in 2019, the discovery of flammable tape in the cabin after its second test in 2022, and the present problems.
With the ISS set to be retired in 2030, the longer Starliner takes to become fully operational, the less time it has to demonstrate its value.