Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to attempt uncrewed return to Earth Friday

Boeing’s beleaguered spacecraft will attempt to undock from the International Space Station on Friday and return to Earth without any astronauts on board, NASA announced Wednesday.

The space agency said teams were on track for an uncrewed departure from the ISS. Starliner Capsuleprovided the weather forecast remains clear at its landing site in New Mexico. The journey back to Earth is expected to take about six hours, ending with a landing at New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The return flight represents the final phase of a high-stakes test flight that didn’t go as planned. The mission — Starliner’s first manned trip to space — was supposed to prove that Boeing could reliably ferry astronauts to and from the space station, paving the way for NASA to certify it. But after NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched on June 5, problems arose with several of the spacecraft’s thrusters, and a helium leak was detected in its propulsion system.

These problems forced NASA to keep Starliner and the astronauts aboard the space station for months longer than planned, while engineers on the ground scrambled to investigate the malfunctions. Eventually, NASA decided that the Starliner capsule would return to Earth without anyone on board, while Wilmore and Williams waited until they could return to Earth. hitchhiking home on a SpaceX capsule in February instead.

“I personally look forward to the return of Starliner,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said at a news conference Wednesday. “We learned a lot on this test flight, but we’ll continue to learn more, I’m sure, during the undocking and deorbiting phase.”

Starliner is scheduled to leave the space station around 6:04 p.m. ET on Friday and land in New Mexico at 12:03 a.m. ET.

The undocking process will be slightly different than it would be with astronauts on board, with the capsule moving away from the space station more quickly, according to Anthony Vareha, lead flight director for Starliner undocking and return at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The changes were made largely to protect the space station in case something goes wrong, and because astronauts won’t be on board to take manual control of the spacecraft, if necessary.

After pulling away from the orbital outpost, Starliner’s engines will trigger what’s called a deorbit burn to set it on a fiery trajectory through Earth’s atmosphere. As it approaches the landing site in New Mexico, the capsule will deploy parachutes above and airbags below the spacecraft to cushion its landing.

For Boeing, the successful return of its Starliner capsule will likely be a bittersweet moment. If all goes well, it could mean NASA astronauts could have safely returned home aboard the spacecraft, even though the agency’s top officials voted unanimously to tap SpaceX for the return flight to minimize the risk of further failures.

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