NASA announced a return date for Boeing’s Starliner capsule. However, the capsule will return without its crew. The Starliner spacecraft is set to return back to Earth on September 6. The stranded spacecraft will undock from the International Space Station (ISS) around 6 p.m. ET on that date and will hover closer to home for about six hours. According to NASA, the spacecraft will land in New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor around midnight.

Starliner

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station; Photo: NASA.

Unlike the spacecraft, the crew will remain in space. The two-person crew that rode the Starliner to the ISS spacecraft on June 5 will remain on board the orbiting laboratory. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will continue their work aboard the space station through February 2025.

On August 24, NASA announced that experts were worried about gas leaks and issues with Starliner’s propulsion system. The space agency determined the mission was unsafe enough to finish with a crew on board.

“The uncrewed Starliner spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return with flight controllers at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida,” according to an update from NASA. “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.

Starliner previously completed a successful uncrewed entry and landing during two orbital flight tests, CNN reports. According to NASA, during one of those tests, the spacecraft autonomously undocked with the station safely. Boeing has already recorded $1.5 billion in losses from 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.”

Williams and Wilmore will fly home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule no earlier than February 2025. The Crew Dragon spacecraft is certified to fly astronaut missions and has completed about a dozen crewed trips to orbit.

 

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