Boeing Starliner Set to Begin Its Journey Home, Empty

Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight is slated to enter its final stages on Friday when the spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station to embark on its return trip to Earth — without its two-person astronaut crew aboard.

Boeing’s commercial spacecraft has been plagued by malfunctions, cost overruns and delays ever since NASA first awarded the aerospace behemoth a $4.2 billion contract to build a vehicle the space agency could use to replace the space shuttle, which was retired in 2011. Despite having received the larger of two contracts (SpaceX received $2.6 billion to develop Crew Dragon) that were awarded in 2014, the Starliner project is now more than $1.5 billion overbudget. On top of that, the project, which was supposed to see its first crewed test flight completed by 2017, has been running years behind schedule. (SpaceX also missed the 2017 deadline but completed its crewed test flight in 2020.)

So it was a big deal when the Starliner spacecraft, dubbed Calypso by astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, was finally stacked on a launchpad at Florida’s Cape Canaveral back in May. And it was all the more embarrassing when the first, second and third launch attempts were all aborted due to various spacecraft malfunctions, including the discovery of a small helium leak that engineers spent days scrutinizing before ultimately concluding it would still be safe to send Williams, the mission pilot, and Wilmore, the mission commander, up to the ISS.

On June 5 Starliner thundered off the launch pad amid flumes of steam, smoke and tangerine rocket flame. And then it reached the ISS where there were docking issues, nonfiring boosters and that one small helium leak had become multiple helium leaks.

Williams and Wilmore’s week-long ISS stay turned into a weeks-long sojourn as NASA and Boeing officials insisted that Starliner was safe to use, but continually delayed its crewed return flight. At the end of August NASA officials announced that the astronaut pair would remain on the ISS until early 2025. On top of that, when they do plummet back to Earth Williams and Wilmore will be aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon instead of Boeing Starliner.

However, after 93 days aloft the Starliner ship itself will begin its return trip on Friday.

The spacecraft’s hatch was closed off from the ISS on Thursday night and geared up for re-entry, a process that, weather and luck providing, will begin with the ship undocking from the ISS at 5:04 p.m. CST. Five hours and 15 minutes later Starliner’s braking rockets have been programmed to fire for 59 seconds, bringing the ship out of orbit.

If all of that goes well – and admittedly at this point there’s a not-zero chance things won’t – the beleaguered spacecraft will become a fireball, streaking southwest to northeast across the sky from the Baja Peninsula to the Gulf of California to northern Mexico. From there, its three parachutes should allow it to make its final descent into a 4-mph airbag-assisted landing in White Sands, New Mexico, home of a NASA testing facility, with NASA and Boeing engineers standing by.

From there, the odds are good that we won’t be seeing another Boeing Starliner launch for a while. NASA had Boeing scheduled to launch its first fully operational mission in August 2025. However, considering that Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne are going to need to overhaul Starliner’s propulsion system, and the fact that NASA may very well require another crewed test flight before rating Starliner cleared for operational use, it seems unlikely Starliner will be making that trip.

The trip itself could still happen though.

After all, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which is now tapped to tote Williams and Wilmore home in February, has been rated and flying to and from the ISS every six months since 2020.