Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to return to Earth without a crew on Friday

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will attempt to undock from the space station on Friday and return to Earth without any astronauts onboard, according to NASA.

Boeing's beleaguered spacecraft will attempt to undock from the International Space Station on Friday and return to Earth without any astronauts onboard, NASA announced on Wednesday.

The space agency said teams are on track for the uncrewed departure of the Starliner capsule, provided weather forecasts remain clear at its landing site in New Mexico. The journey back to Earth is expected to last around six hours, culminating in a landing at New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor in the early minutes of Saturday morning.

The return flight represents the final phase of a high-stakes test flight that did not go as planned. The mission — Starliner's first crewed trip to space — was meant to prove that Boeing could reliably ferry astronauts to and from the space station, paving the way for NASA to certify it to do so. But after launching NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on June 5, problems cropped up with several of the spacecraft’s thrusters, and leaking helium was detected in its propulsion system.

The issues forced NASA to keep Starliner and the astronauts on the space station for months longer than expected as engineers on the ground scrambled to investigate the malfunctions. In the end, NASA decided that the Starliner capsule would fly back to Earth without anyone onboard, while Wilmore and Williams wait to hitch a ride home on a SpaceX capsule in February instead.

“I’m personally looking very forward to getting Starliner back,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said Wednesday in a news briefing. “We’ve learned a lot on this test flight, but we’ll continue to learn more, I’m sure, through the undock and the de-orbit phase.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/boeing-starliner-spacecraft-return-earth-rcna169335

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