Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended on Friday night with a successful landing, though it was not without its share of challenges. The empty Starliner capsule descended onto New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range after a six-hour journey from the International Space Station, marking the end of a long-awaited and delayed debut for the spacecraft.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the two test pilots who were scheduled to return to Earth on the Starliner, will have to wait until next year for their ride home. NASA deemed their return on the Starliner too risky due to ongoing thruster failures and helium leaks. Instead, the agency has booked a flight with SpaceX for their return, which is scheduled for the end of this month. This means that Wilmore and Williams will have spent over eight months in space, far longer than their original mission duration.
Boeing’s first crewed spaceflight, which was initially slated for mid-June, was plagued by a series of issues that caused months of drama and uncertainty. The launch was delayed due to a string of problems with the spacecraft, including thruster failures and helium leaks. Despite extensive testing and assurances from Boeing, NASA ultimately decided that it was not safe for the astronauts to return on the Starliner.
The two astronauts were supposed to have been back on Earth a week after their launch. However, their return was delayed as engineers worked to understand and address the issues with the Starliner. In the end, the capsule left the space station with their empty seats and blue spacesuits, along with some old station equipment.
In a show of support for NASA’s decision, Wilmore and Williams’ families spoke out about the situation. “She’s on her way home,” Williams radioed as the capsule undocked from the space station and disappeared into the darkness of space. Williams stayed up late to see how everything turned out, and she was not disappointed. “A good landing, pretty awesome,” said Boeing’s Mission Control.
Cameras on the space station and two NASA planes captured the capsule’s descent and landing, which was met with cheers and applause. Despite a few minor issues during reentry, Starliner made a “bull’s-eye landing,” according to NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.
However, even with the successful return, there is a sense of disappointment among NASA officials that the mission did not go as planned. “All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it,” said Stich at a news conference early Saturday.
Boeing did not participate in the news briefing in Houston, but two of the company’s top space and defense officials, Ted Colbert and Kay Sears, wrote a note to employees expressing their support for NASA’s decision. “While this may not have been how we originally envisioned the test flight concluding, we support NASA’s decision for Starliner and are proud of how our team and spacecraft performed,” they wrote.
The journey to this successful landing has been filled with delays and setbacks for Boeing. After the retirement of the space shuttles more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to provide taxi service to and from the International Space Station. However, Boeing’s first test flight in 2019 encountered so many problems that it had to be repeated. Even the do-over in 2022 uncovered additional flaws, leading to a repair bill of over $1 billion.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has been steadily launching astronauts for NASA since 2020, and their next flight with the agency is scheduled for later this month. The Dragon capsule will launch with only two astronauts, as two seats have been reserved for Wilmore and Williams for their return journey.
Despite the challenges faced by the Starliner, Wilmore and Williams, both veteran astronauts and retired Navy captains, have kept busy in space, helping with repairs and experiments. They are now full-time crew members on the space station, along with seven others.
The problems with Starliner’s propulsion system were first detected before liftoff, with a small helium leak. But after the launch, four more leaks were discovered, followed by five thruster failures. While four of the failed thrusters were recovered, NASA was still concerned about the possibility of more malfunctions during the capsule’s descent from orbit. Boeing conducted numerous tests to address the issues, but NASA ultimately decided to stick with the safer option of using SpaceX for the astronauts
