After months of chaos over its security, Boeing’s new astronaut capsule will leave the International Space Station on Friday without its crew.
NASA’s two test pilots will remain on the space station — their home until next year — as Starliner capsule preparing to unload and aiming for a landing moment six hours later in the New Mexico desert.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams should have flown the Starliner back to Earth in June, a week after they launched into it. But thruster failures and helium leaks ruined their trip to the space station.
NASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return Wilmore and Williams on the Starliner. So the capsule contains their empty seats and blue spacesuits along with some old station equipment. SpaceX will bring the duo back in late February, stretching their original eight-day mission to more than eight months.
Boeing’s first astronaut flight ends a journey filled with delays and setbacks. After the space shuttles were retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. Boeing ran into so many problems on its first unmanned test flight in 2019 that it had to repeat it. The 2022 transition revealed even more flaws and the repair bill exceeded $1 billion.
SpaceX’s crew shuttle flight later this month will be its 10th for NASA since 2020. The Dragon capsule will launch on the semiannual expedition with only two astronauts because two seats are reserved for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg.
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