The ill-fated Starliner spacecraft has returned from Earth at the end of a 93-day mission that was only supposed to last eight days. The empty capsule landed safely on September 7, 2024 at 12:01 am EDT at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.
Normally, a spacecraft leaving the International Space Station (ISS) is hardly newsworthy these days. However, when Boeing's first crewed Starliner visit to the orbital laboratory results in the stranding of a pair of NASA astronauts for eight months with no ride home, it will draw attention.
Undocking at 6:04 pm EDT on September 6, the departure was marked by unwonted drama, despite the insistence of NASA on playing it down as if it was still routine.
Starliner was returning empty because of a wonky thruster system that failed during the docking last June and the space agency and Boeing engineers couldn't guarantee that another failure wouldn't occur during the undocking. Worse, the capsule's computers had to be reprogrammed for the maneuver and the only way to really test it was by trying it out in the real world.
As a result there was a distinct air of tension in the NASA livestream of the event. There had already been speculation that Starliner wouldn't be able to undock autonomously in its present condition and that it might damage or even jam the docking mechanism.
In the end, the spacecraft detached from the ISS on schedule, but it wasn't out of the metaphorical woods yet. It spent the first 10 minutes of flight backing away until it was out of the safety zone around the station. It then fired its thrusters to place it in a slightly higher altitude orbit to prevent it from colliding with the ISS in the event of a complete propulsion failure.
At 11:17 pm EDT, Starliner made its 60-second deorbit burn and oriented itself for reentry. Hitting the Earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific Ocean, contact was temporarily lost with the craft as temperatures around the capsule reached 3,000 °F (1,600 °C). Once in the lower atmosphere and with speeds now in the subsonic realm, parachutes were deployed to further slow the capsule.
At 3,000 ft (900 m), the heat shield was jettisoned and four airbags automatically inflated to absorb the shock of the touchdown.
With Starliner safely returned, the next task will be to return it to Boeing for a complete examination. And that won't be the only thing under scrutiny. With two astronauts still in orbit, the whole Starliner project is now in doubt. NASA certainly will not approve the craft for service until it completes at least one crewed mission successfully. With Boeing operating on a fixed-price contract, the company is already close to two billion dollars in the hole and another mission will easily add US$100 million on top of that at a time when Boeing's fortunes have already taken a serious hit.
Source: NASA
