Boeing’s Starliner space capsule undocked to leave the International Space Station on Friday – months after its original departure date and without the two astronauts it carried when it launched in early June.
According to Nasathe Starliner autonomously left its docking port at the ISS at just after 6 p.m. ET to make the roughly six-hour journey home to a landing zone at White Sands Space Harbor in the New Mexico desert. Coverage of the departure broadcast live.
Nasa astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore should have flew the Starliner back to Earth in June, a week after it was launched into it. But propulsion failures and helium leaks marred their ride to the space station. Instead, they will remain at the ISS for the rest of the year and will return aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February.
Nasa eventually decided it was too risky to return Williams and Wilmore on the Starliner. So the capsule contains their empty seats and blue spacesuits along with some old station equipment.
Boeing’s first astronaut flight concludes a journey full of delays and setbacks. After NASA’s space shuttles were retired more than a decade ago, Nasa hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. In 2019, Boeing encountered so many problems on its first test flight with no one on board that it had to repeat it. The 2022 redo revealed even more mistakes and the repair bill reached $1.5 billion.
The Starliner finally blasted into space on June 5 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station after unsuccessful launches on May 6 and June 1 were plagued with problems and after earlier delays that included reports of helium leaks in the service module.
On the first launch attempt, a problem was found with a valve on the second stage, or upper section, of the rocket. On the second, a computer tripped an automatic grip just three minutes and 50 seconds from takeoff. This was later attributed to a single ground power supply failure within one of the launch control computers.
Even after it was successfully launched, helium leaks continued to plague the spacecraft. As the Starliner approached the ISS, two leaks were detected, but Nasa determined that the spacecraft remained stable.
What started as an eight-day mission dragged on for three months after the leaks and faulty thrusters safety issues raised.
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However, Nasa and Boeing officials were determined that the astronauts were not stranded and that the technical problems did not threaten the mission.
“We will come home when we are ready,” Steve Stich, Nasa’s commercial crew program manager, said at the press conference in July.
