Starliner has landed.
Boeing’s troubled spacecraft has finally come home, but the two NASA astronauts who traveled it to the International Space Station in June remain in orbit.
Out of an abundance of caution, NASA officials decided not to put the astronauts, Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore, back on the Starliner. They will spend an additional five months on the space station as part of the crew before returning to Earth around February.
Undocking, reentry and landing of the Starliner went smoothly, supporting Boeing officials’ contention that the vehicle was safe for the astronauts. None of the concerns about the Starliner’s thrusters turned out to affect returns.
Descending under three parachutes, the capsule touched down at New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday (10:01 p.m. Friday in New Mexico). Airbags at the bottom of the capsule cushion the impact.
The big maneuver of the evening was a success.
After several orbits of the planet, at 11:17 a.m., the large thrusters on the Starliner fired for about a minute to lift the Starliner out of orbit. Then he fired his service module—the cylindrical component beneath the crew capsule that housed the troublesome thrusters.
“The flight home is going smoothly,” said a commentator on NASA’s video coverage of the landing.
The crew capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the central Pacific, traveling northeast, crossing northwestern Mexico on its way down into the Chihuahuan Desert.
Earlier in the evening, after leaving the space station, Starliner had test-fired 12 thrusters on the crew capsule section of the spacecraft. One didn’t work, but that didn’t pose a problem, since there are two redundant systems of six thrusters each. This is a separate set of thrusters on the service module.
Flight controllers also fired 10 of the service module thrusters and they all performed as expected.
NASA’s video coverage of the re-entry and landing Off Starliner is on, and you can watch it in the video player above.
Undocking early this evening was a simple matter.
At 6:04 p.m. Eastern Time, the hooks holding Starliner tightly to the space station retracted and the springs on the spacecraft pushed it away from the docking port. At that time, it was about 260 miles above central China.
A series of thruster firings then gently pushed the Starliner up and over the space station.
“Starliner is now on its way back to Earth,” said Anna Schneider, a spokeswoman for NASA, about 20 minutes after the vehicle undocked and reached far enough that space station flight controllers didn’t need to keep an eye on it. At higher altitudes, it is moving more slowly than the space station and the distance between them is increasing rapidly.
It was a rocky start to the end of the mission, which launched in June, on a test flight that was the first time Starliner had carried people into orbit. The flight was intended to be the final push before NASA certifies the spacecraft for a once-a-year mission that carries astronauts to and from the space station.
The vehicle’s propulsion system experienced problems during its approach to the space station, including several balky thrusters and leaks of helium, the gas used to push propellant in the weightlessness of orbit. Although the Starliner was able to dock successfully, the cause of the problems was still not fully understood, and NASA officials decided that it would be safer for the Starliner to return without any ships.
Why does the Starliner travel home without any astronauts?
The Starliner mission carried two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, to the space station.
Uncertainty about the cause of the vehicle’s propulsion problems led to unease about what might be a more serious underlying problem. A catastrophic failure of the Starliner’s propulsion system during the return trip could leave the spacecraft stranded in orbit or it could burn up on re-entry.
Boeing officials have said they believe weeks of analysis and ground tests show the Starliner could have safely returned Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore to Earth. But NASA officials decided it would be less dangerous for the two astronauts to stay on the space station than return to Earth in the Starliner.
Before undocking, Ms. Williams, who named the vehicle Calypso several years ago, thanked the Boeing Mission Control team.
“It’s time to bring calypso home,” she said. “We’ve got your back and you’ve got this. Bring her back to earth. Good luck.”
In turn, flight director Chloe Mehring thanked the astronauts, who have spent years preparing for this flight. “We remember every shock and every revelation with you,” Mrs. Mehring said. “The teams on the ground have worked countless hours over the past few weeks, months and for our group over the years to bring Calypso back, and we’re ready for it today.”
Now what will happen to the astronauts?
Two Starliner astronauts will become full members of the space station crew. NASA calls each rotation of crew members an “expedition,” and Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore will now be part of Expedition 72.
Later this month, two other astronauts, Nick Hague of NASA and Alexander Gorbunov of Russia, are scheduled to launch to the space station in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which will also serve as part of Expedition 72. To secure seats for Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore on the return trip to Earth next year, two other NASA astronauts who were scheduled to serve on Expedition 72 — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — withdrew from the mission, known as Crew-9.
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