Starliner to Return Empty
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously undock from the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than 6:04 PM EDT on Friday, September 6, 2024, pending weather and operational readiness. About 6 hours after undocking, Starliner is expected to land at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico around 12:03 AM EDT on Saturday, September 7. The spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return, with flight controllers on the ground able to remotely command it if needed.
Crew to Remain in Space Until 2025
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard Starliner on June 5 for its first crewed flight test (Boe-CFT), will not return on Starliner. Instead, they will remain on the ISS for about 6 more months and return to Earth in February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule as part of the Crew-9 mission. NASA made this decision on August 24 due to uncertainty about the safety of returning the crew on Starliner after it experienced helium leaks and thruster issues.
Technical Issues and NASA’s Safety Decision
During Starliner’s approach and docking to the ISS in early June, the spacecraft suffered inconsistent thruster behavior and multiple helium leaks. In the following weeks, NASA and Boeing engineers conducted extensive testing to assess the risks of returning the crew. Ultimately, NASA concluded there was too much uncertainty to meet safety requirements for human spaceflight and decided to bring Starliner home empty.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson emphasized that the safety of the crew was the top priority, noting that spaceflight is inherently risky and test flights are neither safe nor routine by nature. The choice to return Starliner uncrewed reflects NASA’s commitment to its “core value and North Star” of safety.
Next Steps After Landing
After Starliner lands, it will be recovered and transported to the Boeing Starliner factory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and Boeing will review all mission data to determine what additional actions are required for Starliner to meet NASA’s certification requirements for regular crew flights.
The empty return allows further data gathering on Starliner while not accepting more crew risk than necessary. However, it represents a significant setback for Boeing’s Starliner program, which has faced years of delays and over $1.5 billion in losses. It remains to be seen how this test flight’s challenges will impact Boeing’s future in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which aims to have two providers (Boeing and SpaceX) for crew access to the ISS.
Starliner will return to Earth without a crew on September 7 after a 3-month mission that exposed technical issues. The astronauts it launched will instead come home on a SpaceX vehicle in early 2025, as NASA prioritizes their safety. Starliner’s future role will depend on the outcome of post-flight reviews and Boeing’s ability to resolve the spacecraft’s problems to meet NASA’s stringent requirements.
