Boeing Starliner Returns To Earth Without Its 2 CFT Astronauts

Boeing's crew flight test(CFT-1) Starliner undocked from the International Space Station(ISS) on Sept. 6, at 2204 UTC, performed a series of burns through its 6-hour flight in space, and landed uncrewed, under guiding parachutes, in New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor at 0401 UTC on Sept. 7. Due to Thruster and other issues, the capsule (named Calypso) did not return with its crew, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

"Great landing of Calypso!" Williams said from ISS, on the agency's webcast. "I don't think that could have gone better."

Williams and Wilmore have no need for their "Boeing Blue" spacesuits which are among the gear that Calypso brought home Saturday morning. "The suits are not compatible," manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in [SpaceX Crew] Dragon, and vice versa." Both astronauts will come home in February aboard the Elon Musk spacecraft.

"I'm happy to report that Starliner did really well today in the undocking, reentry and landing sequence," Stich told reporters after the touchdown Saturday morning. "It was a bullseye landing, a great landing out at White Sands." He added that Wilmore and Williams would have been fine if they'd been aboard the capsule. "It would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board;"

Stich however added that NASA's decision to err on the side of safety with the data they had on hand before landing still stands: "I think we made the right decision."

Boeing representatives did not participate in the post-landing briefing, but did release a statement shortly after Starliner's return.

"I want to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, reentry and landing," Mark Nappi, Boeing's vice president and program manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program, said in the statement. "We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program."

This was the third touchdown overall for Starliner. The spacecraft also flew two uncrewed test flights to the ISS, one in December 2019 and one in May 2022. Starliner failed to meet up with the orbiting lab on the first flight after suffering several glitches. The second uncrewed mission was a success, though Starliner experienced some thruster issues on that flight as well.

Boeing and NASA had hoped that CFT-1 would pave the way for Starliner's certification, allowing the capsule to join Crew Dragon and Russia's Soyuz in flying six-month-long astronaut missions to the ISS.

NASA in 2014, gave SpaceX and Boeing multibillion-dollar contracts to finish work on their astronaut spacecraft -- Crew Dragon and Starliner, respectively. The agency wanted one or both of those vehicles to start flying astronauts to and from the ISS by 2017, reestablishing a homegrown orbital human spaceflight capability -- something the U.S. had lacked since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

Musk's SpaceX won the race with first astronaut mission, a test flight to the ISS called Demo-2, which lifted off in May 2020, and the company has since launched about nine crewed and 30 cargo missions to the orbiting lab.

Starliner's crewed debut, CFT-1 launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 5 this year, sending Williams and Wilmore to the orbiting lab for a planned eight-day stay which will now turn into an 8-month stay, to be rescued by Musk's Dragon.