Boeing’s Starliner Crew Mission Returns to Earth, however Its Astronauts Are Nonetheless in Area

Starliner Spacecraft Safely Returns to Earth, sans Astronauts

By Lee Billings

After three agonizing months in area, an orbital mission that was initially supposed to span scarcely greater than every week has concluded with a parachute-slowed, airbag-cushioned autonomous touchdown shortly after midnight EDT at NASA’s White Sands Area Harbor in New Mexico.

Starliner—the Boeing-built spacecraft that started a troubled check flight to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) in June—is ultimately again on Earth. The identical can’t be mentioned for its crew, nevertheless: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stay onboard the ISS. Final month officers on the area company, citing security issues, opted to as a substitute fly them dwelling in February 2025 by way of a tried-and-true Dragon spacecraft constructed and operated by Boeing’s aerospace competitor SpaceX. Accommodating that change required that two different NASA astronauts, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, be booted from SpaceX’s subsequent scheduled Dragon flight to the ISS: the Crew 9 mission, which is slated to launch later this month. This leaves two open seats for Wilmore and Williams when that Dragon returns to Earth subsequent February.

“It was a great day to return Starliner, and it was great to have a successful undock, deorbit and landing of the vehicle,” mentioned Steve Stich, program supervisor for NASA’s Business Crew Program, throughout a postlanding press convention through which he summarized the spacecraft’s “darn near-flawless” efficiency. “I am thrilled for our Boeing team, and all of our colleagues that worked this mission across the country on the NASA team and the Boeing team…. It’s a testament to those people that we got the vehicle back today.”

Chasing the Dragon

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The profitable touchdown—Starliner’s third—means Boeing’s program has survived to fly one other day. However a lot of what occurs subsequent continues to be up within the air.

This check flight was meant to be the ultimate stage in certifying Starliner’s readiness for once-per-year astronaut-toting journeys to the ISS. However the spacecraft’s failure to return with its crew may set off NASA to demand further check flights earlier than awarding that certification—at Boeing’s expense. When the area company chosen Boeing and SpaceX to develop crewed spacecraft in 2014, each corporations signed “fixed price” contracts beneath which they, slightly than NASA, would cowl price overruns. Additional, funds from NASA can be contingent on every firm hitting sure set milestones. The area company allotted a complete of $2.6 billion to SpaceX—and $4.2 billion to Boeing. SpaceX flew its first crewed Dragon to the ISS in Could 2020 and has been fulfilling its contractual obligations to NASA ever since. In distinction, technical missteps and delays have plagued Boeing’s Starliner program, and quarterly filings from late June revealed the corporate has misplaced $1.6 billion—up to now—on the hassle.

At a press convention final month that introduced the swap to Dragon as Wilmore and Williams’s return automobile, NASA administrator Invoice Nelson supplied “100 percent” certainty that Starliner would fly crews once more and famous that he had lately spoken with Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg. “He expressed to me an intention that they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely,” Nelson mentioned.

It is nonetheless unclear precisely how and when Starliner will return to crewed flight—in addition to what assurances different spacefaring nations which might be partnered with NASA on the ISS would possibly request earlier than flying their very own personnel on Boeing’s automobile. However this a lot is definite: time is working quick for the corporate to make good on its obligations to NASA. The area company intends to deorbit the ISS in 2031—and lately introduced it had employed SpaceX to do the deed utilizing a closely modified Dragon.

The Lengthy Goodbye

Wilmore and Williams closed Starliner’s hatch at 1:29 P.M. EDT on Thursday to organize for the uncrewed departure. The automobile—nicknamed Calypso—undocked from the ISS at 6:04 P.M. EDT on Friday, leaving the astronauts behind because the ISS handed over central China. Moments after undocking, the spacecraft executed a “breakout burn,” a dozen sequences of pulses from its auxiliary thrusters to maneuver up and away from the ISS to keep away from bumping into the orbital habitat. As Calypso shrank to a dot barely seen via the ISS’s viewports, Williams radioed a easy, almost-wistful declaration to flight controllers: “She’s on her way home.”

For the subsequent few hours the spacecraft underwent a collection of diagnostic assessments because it drifted to a distance of 90 kilometers from the ISS. Then, at 11:17 P.M. EDT Calypso started its “deorbit burn,” utilizing auxiliary thrusters to orient itself as beefier primary thrusters fired to ship it plunging via our planet’s environment. Throughout that descent, one other burst of firings from auxiliary thrusters ensured that Calypso’s empty crew module separated from the service module, which burned up at excessive altitude as deliberate.

The service module’s fiery finish, which was obligatory to reveal a protecting heatshield for Starliner’s homecoming, has been a basic stumbling block for troubleshooting the spacecraft’s most regarding glitches. This disposable module incorporates 28 auxiliary thrusters, 5 of which failed throughout Starliner’s strategy and rendezvous with the ISS on June 6. It’s additionally the place Starliner had repeatedly sprung a number of small leaks of helium, an inert fuel used to push propellant via thrusters. However with the defective {hardware} destined for lofty destruction slightly than retrieval and research, the one choice had been to research it from afar, gathering as a lot knowledge as doable in hopes of discovering causes—and cures—earlier than the service module incinerated in Earth’s skies.

Within the Doghouse

From these distant investigations, in addition to ground-based testing of similar thrusters, NASA and Boeing engineers traced the 5 service module thrusters’ failure to overheating throughout their operation. The service module’s auxiliary thrusters are mounted in 4 propulsion pods referred to as “doghouses,” which investigators decided retain extra warmth than anticipated because the thrusters fireplace, exacerbating the issue. The overheating seemingly induced Teflon seals to swell and constrict the stream of propellant, in the end resulting in the failures. In worst-case eventualities, such malfunctions may end in disasters resembling Starliner colliding with and breaching the ISS or tumbling to disintegrate in a fireball throughout atmospheric reentry.

Though the engineers had discovered the seemingly trigger for the thruster points, lingering uncertainties remained. For instance, 4 of Starliner’s 5 failed thrusters had subsequently recovered—however nobody may totally clarify how. In discussions with NASA, Boeing officers nonetheless argued that it was secure to fly the 2 astronauts dwelling on the spacecraft—a key goal that, if left unfulfilled, would in all probability require one more budget-busting future crewed check flight. However with no approach to totally study the thrusters on-orbit to make sure their efficiency, NASA in the end deemed it safer to ship Starliner again with out Wilmore and Williams.

In the course of the closing assembly on the matter, there was “some tension in the room,” Stich acknowledged in a predeparture press convention on Wednesday. “Boeing believed in the model that they had created that tried to predict thruster degradation for the rest of the flight…. The NASA team looked at the model and saw some limitations, and it really had to do with ‘Do we have confidence in the thrusters—and how much we could predict their degradation—from undock to the deorbit burn?’ And [we] could not get comfortable with that.”

Even so, Stich maintained throughout Wednesday’s press convention that “we have confidence in the vehicle…. We’ve had two good [uncrewed] landings with Starliner so far, and we’re expecting another one Friday.”

With this almost flawless (however not precisely triumphant) reentry and landing now on the books, all expectations are for Boeing to redouble its efforts to get better from its spaceflight setbacks and restore Starliner’s tarnished popularity. Whether or not NASA—or anybody else—ought to nonetheless be anticipated to have faith in these efforts, nevertheless, is one other matter completely.