Following NASAFollowing the tense decision to remove its astronauts from Boeing’s spacecraft for their return home, many eyes will be on Starliner tonight to see how it performs an uncrewed landing.
The capsule, launched in June, took test pilots Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to the International Space Station for its first human spaceflight. But what was supposed to be an eight-day visit for the duo turned into an indefinite stay after Starliner experienced propulsion problems and helium leaks into the capsule. space.
SEE ALSO: Boeing’s Starliner Was Mysteriously Flying Like a Submarine in Space. Here’s Why.
After reviewing flight and test data, NASA concluded that it would be too risky to send Wilmore and Williams home aboard Starliner. The agency instead arranged for them to return in a SpaceX spacecraft in February 2025. NASA officials said the Columbia and Challenger space shuttle disasters influenced their safety-focused decision.
“There was just too much uncertainty in predicting the thrusters,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said during an Aug. 24 press conference. “If we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do during undocking and throughout the deorbit burn and separation sequence, I think we would have taken a different course of action.”
The video embedded above shows NASA livestreaming the undocking and departure of the Starliner from the ISS.
Starliner will undock autonomously, firing a few short pulses of its thrusters to pull itself away from the space station. Those short pulses are not expected to cause overheating, which may have played a role in the spacecraft’s reduced propulsion in June, NASA officials said.
The most concerning maneuver will be the use of thrusters to try to leave orbit. This will require the use of some thrusters that were previously malfunctioning.
Boeing’s team believed Starliner could have safely flown Wilmore and Williams back, and NASA’s decision appears to have created friction with the developer. Boeing representatives have not participated in NASA’s recent press conferences. But Stich rejected any suggestion that meetings between the partners were fractious.
The video embedded above shows how NASA will livestream Starliner’s reentry and landing.
“I wouldn’t say it was a screaming and shouting meeting,” he told reporters this week. “It was a tense technical discussion where both sides listened carefully to all the data and, in the end, had to make a decision about whether to send the ship back with or without a crew.”
How to watch the Boeing Starliner landing
The return journey will begin tonight with a robotic undocking from the International Space Station. The US space agency will broadcast the departure on YouTube and on the NASA website at 5:45 pm ET Sept. 6.
Coverage will continue at 10:50 PM ET as the empty spacecraft attempts to leave orbit, reenter Earth’s atmosphere, and land in a New Mexico desert. If the descent goes as planned, flight controllers predict that Starliner will land where it was intended. Army Missile Range at White Sands a little over an hour later, just after midnight ET on September 7th.
Starliner successfully landed without a crew in 2019, marking the first time a U.S. spacecraft designed for human passengers had landed on land rather than crashing into an ocean. A system of parachutes and airbags is expected to cushion Starliner’s fall to the ground.
