Boeing’s Starliner capsule undocked from the ISS at 6:04PM Eastern time on September 6 and arrived safely and gracefully at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:01AM on September 7. Calypso, as it is called so the capsule, never arrived. had a crew on board despite flying to the ISS with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. NASA decided in late August that the astronauts would return home in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February for safety reasons. Wilmore and Williams simply provided support for the capsule’s return journey and watched the re-entry and landing coverage. “You have this. We have your back, and you got this. Bring him back to Earth,” Williams told ground control.
Astronauts flew the Starliner as part of its first crew flight aimed at proving that the spacecraft is ready to carry humans regularly to the ISS alongside the SpaceX Crew Dragon. They were supposed to stay in the orbiting laboratory for eight days, but the spacecraft’s service module started leaking helium on the way there. Some of the module’s thrusters are also malfunctioning. The Starliner uses helium to pressurize its fuel tanks and to propel the propellant in its thrusters that steer the spacecraft. Three months ago, engineers on the ground conducted tests on the Starliner with the help of astronauts, but NASA eventually decided that the Starliner would fly home without a test because it did not have confidence in the reliability of the players’ performance.
During the Starliner’s post-landing press conference, Boeing was absent, and three NASA officials spoke about the landing. When asked why Boeing was absent and if the relationship between the agency and the company was affected by the Starliner issues, representatives said that Boeing had referred NASA to represent the mission. They said the three have spoken to Boeing executives and the company is willing to work with the agency. Steve Stich, manager of the Commercial Crew Program at NASA Kennedy, also added that although everyone was happy to arrive, part of them still wished it had gone the way they had planned, with the astronauts coming home by ship. Calypso.
Stitch, Joel Montalbano (NASA’s deputy administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate) and Dana Weigel (NASA’s International Space Station administrator) all praised the Starliner for its successful landing on the airport and “the descent of bullseye.” They said they learned a lot from the campaign, which turned out to have achieved 85 to 90 percent of its goals, stressing that it is important to remember that things don’t always go as planned when it comes to aircraft inspections.
It will take about two weeks to return Calypso to NASA’s facilities and about a week after that to get all the data back into the capsule. NASA and Boeing plan to analyze the data the spacecraft collected from all its systems from the time of its orbit until it was retracted, reinserted and landed. They will then use that information to design improvements to the spacecraft.
Unfortunately, they would not be able to test the malfunctioning thrusters on the flight to the ISS, as well as the “doghouses” containing the spacecraft’s propellant system where the helium was leaking. They always planned to dump the service module containing those features when it re-entered, and now it’s at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. NASA previously said the problems arose because the propulsion system overheated as expected during flight, causing the container’s seals to loosen and leak helium. In the case of the thrusters, the heat apparently caused the seals to burst and stop the flow of propellant, leading to a shutdown.
Stitch said he wouldn’t call those problems insurmountable — they just need time to fix. They also don’t know yet if the next Starliner flight will be manned. Currently, the agency is preparing other missions. At the end of September, the SpaceX Crew-8 mission vehicle is scheduled to be decommissioned and return to Earth, and the SpaceX Crew-9 mission is expected to be launched. Crew-9 will fly with two astronauts instead of four to accommodate Wilmore and Williams for their return flight in February.
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