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Starliner safely returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday in a huge vindication for Boeing’s engineers.
Crucially, NASA reported no issues with its manoeuvres, with all 27 working thrusters performing as expected and the spacecraft following a “perfect trajectory” home.
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Suni Williams, one of the two astronauts left behind on the space laboratory, told the team, “You guys are the best,” when it touched down.
Later, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, even hinted the spacecraft could still have a future despite its technical problems, declaring the “important” test flight would set up “future missions”.
The textbook landing ends one of the most high-profile incidents in NASA’s recent history, after it decided to return the Boeing-made spacecraft uncrewed following a string of technical problems both before and during its outward journey in June.
However, the decision means the two astronauts onboard will now not return until February – eight months after they blasted off for what was meant to be a one-week mission.
Boeing’s wider reputation had a lot riding on the spacecraft’s success following the mid-air blowout of a door plug on board an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 in January. That incident significantly came after two MAXs crashed in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019, killing 346 people and leading to claims there was a poor safety culture at the planemaker.
On Friday though, Starliner finally undocked from the ISS before performing a series of burns using its reaction controls system (RCS) thrusters to depart from the ISS.
Butch Wilmore, the other astronaut who will remain behind, said over the radio, “We’ve enjoyed every training event and every meeting. We remember every setback and revelation with you.
“The teams on the ground have worked countless hours over the last few weeks, months – and for a group of us, years – to bring Calypso [Starliner] back.
“It’s been special. Bring it home.”
Six hours later, Starliner deployed its parachutes and landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, where it will remain before being taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for inspection and processing.
Ken Bowersox, a NASA associate administrator, heaped praise on the team for bringing Starliner back safely.
“Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible,” he said.
“NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station.”
Despite the positive return, Boeing executives later failed to attend the post-landing press conference.
Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s space operations, said the aerospace giant had simply “deferred to NASA to represent the mission”.
Nonetheless, Stich praised the mission.
“From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it,” he admitted.
“We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board.
“Depending who you are on the team, there’s different emotions associated with that and I think it’s going to take a little time to work through that for me a little bit and for everybody else on the Boeing and NASA team.”
After a series of delays, Starliner finally blasted off to the ISS in June on its historic first crewed mission.
The spacecraft was due to come back after just a week with its two astronauts on board, but issues with both the thrusters and helium leaks on the outward journey mean their stay will now extend to eight months.
The decision to return the crew on a separate SpaceX spacecraft came despite weeks of strong denial from Boeing and NASA.
Over the last two months, teams on Earth have been trying to duplicate the loss of performance in the thrusters, with researchers concluding that a Teflon seal had heated and expanded, which constrained the flow of oxidiser.
However, NASA finally concluded there was still “too much uncertainty” in predicting how the thruster would perform after undocking, and instead opted to send the spacecraft back without crew.
The current Starliner mission is the final test flight before NASA certifies the vehicle for regular operational missions.
