Boeing Starliner back on Earth, but crew Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore still in space

Boeing Co’s glitchy space capsule returned to Earth without a crew, after a mission that was marked by technical problems and delays.

The CST-100 Starliner departed the International Space Station (ISS) at 6:04 pm Friday New York time and landed in White Sands, New Mexico after a flight lasting about six hours. The flight drew international attention after a series of technical issues led NASA to significantly extend the stays of astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams. The pair, originally set to come home after roughly a week, will remain on the orbiting research lab until early 2025, when a craft from SpaceX will carry them home.

NASA decided on Aug. 24 that it was too risky to have astronauts return to Earth in the Boeing vehicle, due to ongoing problems with the capsule’s thrusters – tiny engines the spacecraft uses to maneuver through space. Friday’s return of an empty craft will renew debate over whether Starliner is safe to move forward as a crew capsule for NASA. “It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a press conference.

A key factor in NASA’s decision not to bring the astronauts on the flight was that engineers weren’t fully confident how the thrusters might behave when Starliner needed to ignite them to manoeuvre out of orbit. When Starliner docked with the space station June 6, it experienced a number of helium leaks, and a handful of the capsule’s thrusters failed and had to be rebooted.