Starliner’s Next Mission Pondered

Boeing's Starliner crew capsule suffered a sixth thruster issue and a temporary blip in its guidance system on its way empty from the International Space Station to the New Mexico Desert on Saturday. The capsule is scheduled to launch next August and questions remain about whether it will be crewed.

Meanwhile, a week after Boeing declared the spacecraft was safe to deliver two astronauts to Earth, Starliner landed on the White Sands Missile Range at 12:01.45 EDT on Saturday, ending a mission fraught with malfunctions and leaving those two astronauts behind on the ISS. The spacecraft left the ISS about six hours earlier, and the reentry and landing were textbook according to NASA.

The landing capped a three-month odyssey that began with helium leaks on the ship and thruster issues when it arrived at the ISS. Starliner was supposed to take astronaut/test pilots Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth in mid-June, but investigating the malfunctions postponed their departure for months until late August when NASA announced it was too risky to send them back on the ship. They will join two astronauts arriving on a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight later this month for a six-month rotation as ISS crew members and return to Earth in February.