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

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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.”

Even if Starliner’s uncrewed return trip goes well, NASA will still face a crucial decision on whether to grant the spacecraft its human spaceflight certification even though it did not complete its mission as intended.

What’s ahead for Starliner’s crew

Throughout the weeks that engineers on the ground worked to understand the thruster issues and leaks plaguing the Starliner, Boeing maintained that it believed the vehicle would be safe to bring astronauts Williams and Wilmore home.

In a statement on August 24, Boeing said that it “continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”

Williams and Wilmore will now fly home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule — on a mission called Crew-9 — no earlier than February. The Crew Dragon spacecraft has been certified to fly astronaut missions for about four years and has made around a dozen crewed trips to orbit.

To fit Williams and Wilmore on board the Crew-9 mission, NASA had to boot two astronauts who had already trained for the position off the flight. The space agency announced Friday that those two astronauts would be spaceflight veteran Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman, who was set to make her first trip to space and was expected to serve as commander of the Crew-9 mission.

Aleksandr Gorbunov, a Russian cosmonaut who got his seat via a ridesharing agreement between NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, will remain on the flight. Cardman will also hand over commander duties to Nick Hague, who was previously named as the pilot for Crew-9.

“Handing the helm to (Hague) is both heartbreaking and an honor. Nick and Alex are truly an excellent team, and they will be ready to step up,” Cardman said in a post on the social media site X on Friday. “I only wish (Wilson), Nick, Alex, and I could fly together, but we choose without hesitation to be part of something much larger than ourselves. Ad astra per aspera. Go Crew 9.”