Boeing's 1st crewed Starliner to return to Earth without astronauts on Sept. 6

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Undocking will occur no earlier than 6:04 p.m. ET on Sept. 6.

A white and black Boeing Starliner space capsule is seen docked at the International Space Station through a station window with the Earth below.
Boeing's Starliner space capsule is seen docked at the International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA)

Boeing's Starliner capsule now has a homecoming date.

NASA announced this evening (Aug. 29) that Starliner will depart the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than next Friday (Sept. 6), provided the weather cooperates and no technical issues pop up.

If all goes according to plan, the capsule will undock at 6:04 p.m. EDT (2204 GMT) on Sept. 6 and land under parachutes six hours later in White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

Starliner launched June 5 on its first-ever crewed mission, carrying NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore toward the ISS. The capsule docked successfully a day later, but there was some drama; Starliner experienced a few helium leaks, and five of its 28 reaction control system thrusters failed on the way to the orbiting lab.

Starliner's mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), was supposed to last just 10 days or so. But NASA and Boeing kept extending the capsule's orbital stay as they studied the thruster issue, seeking to understand what had caused it and whether it might crop up again on Starliner's journey back to Earth.

In the end, NASA decided that putting Williams and Wilmore back on Starliner was just too risky: The agency announced this past weekend that the two astronauts would come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February of next year. (That Dragon will launch two astronauts to the ISS on the Crew-9 mission next month.) The Boeing capsule, meanwhile, would return home uncrewed.

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We didn't have a target departure date for Starliner until today, however. That information came at the conclusion of a flight readiness review, held jointly by NASA and Boeing.

"The uncrewed Starliner spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return with flight controllers at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida," NASA officials wrote in an update this evening. 

"Teams on the ground are able to remotely command the spacecraft if needed through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking, re-entry, and parachute-assisted landing in the southwest United States," they added. 

As NASA's update noted, Starliner has come back to Earth autonomously twice before, at the end of uncrewed test flights in December 2019 and May 2022. Starliner failed to reach the ISS as planned on the first of those missions but succeeded on the second.

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Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • newtons_laws
    The article says
    "The uncrewed Starliner spacecraft will perform a fully autonomous return with flight controllers at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida," NASA officials wrote in an update this evening.

    "Teams on the ground are able to remotely command the spacecraft if needed through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking, re-entry, and parachute-assisted landing in the southwest United States," they added.

    Of course for some rather obscure reason Boeing had removed the autonomous return software capability from the Starliner that had previously been demonstrated, so they will have to reinstate that software on the Starliner before it can leave the ISS. As an aside it would be interesting to know whether Nasa had been made aware by Boeing prior to launch of this Starliner mission that they had removed the autonomous return capability?
    Reply
  • jan.wolitzky
    Once the Starliner departs, there will be 9 crew aboard the ISS, with 3 seats on the attached Soyuz capsule, and 4 seats on the attached Crew Dragon. In the event of a needed partial (or complete) evacuation (as has happened at least six times, because of potential space junk collisions detected too late for an orbital change), what will be done with the two extra crew members, before the arrival of Crew-9 (with two empty seats)? The attached Dragon has no extra seats aboard, and the Boeing space suits that Wilmore and Williams wore are incompatible with the Dragon.
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    And, with the FAA "grounding" SpaceX launches for an indeterminant period, there is no "emergency launch" capability for a "rescue" until the FAA is "satisfied".

    If Boeing doesn't abandon the StarLiner contract, NASA needs to be much more involved in reviewing the status of future Boeing launches, to be more assured that Boeing doesn't keep inserting NASA astronauts between rocks and hard places with its lack of reliability and its unannounced deletion of already proven capabilities.

    Boeing really should just stop trying, having already lost over a billion dollars and not having made past progress rapidly enough to honestly project success before the ISS is set to retire.

    But, scuttlebutt is that Boeings new CEO has said he intends to complete the project. I guess that seems necessary as part of rehabilitating Boeing's reputation for engaging in future business, both in the space industry and the aircraft industry.

    Hoping that Blue Origin steps up and becomes an honest option to SpaceX for NASA. We will get to see how its New Glen launch vehicle performs before the end of this year (hopefully).
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    Does it seem strange to anybody else that NASA allowed different commercial providers to make space suits that are incompatible with each other's spacecraft? At least NASA was smart enough to standardize the docking mechanisms for the craft it paid to develop for transporting its astronauts to the ISS.

    But, what is going to happen if NASA's vision for multiple commercial LEO space stations with multiple capsule types becomes a reality without standardizing much of the most basic inter-compatibility apparatus?

    Much of the commercial world is thinking monopolistically, and tends to avoid interchangeability for purposes of profiteering. Boeing even lobbied NASA to give it a sole source contract for the new space capsule. We can't rely on commercial companies to put the best interests of the country ahead of their interests in maximizing profits for their companies.
    Reply
  • Viking
    Unclear Engineer said:
    Does it seem strange to anybody else that NASA allowed different commercial providers to make space suits that are incompatible with each other's spacecraft? At least NASA was smart enough to standardize the docking mechanisms for the craft it paid to develop for transporting its astronauts to the ISS.

    But, what is going to happen if NASA's vision for multiple commercial LEO space stations with multiple capsule types becomes a reality without standardizing much of the most basic inter-compatibility apparatus?

    Much of the commercial world is thinking monopolistically, and tends to avoid interchangeability for purposes of profiteering. Boeing even lobbied NASA to give it a sole source contract for the new space capsule. We can't rely on commercial companies to put the best interests of the country ahead of their interests in maximizing profits for their companies.
    Not really. The current director of NASA was upset that NASA was using orange juice from California instead of Florida.
    Reply
  • newtons_laws
    Meanwhile Starliner has started making weird noises. On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft. It sounds like a regular pulse with a repetition rate of about a second (and no, I'm sure it's not someone banging on the outside hull of Starliner even if it sounds like that!) https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/starliners-speaker-began-emitting-strange-sonar-noises-on-saturday/
    Maybe it's electrical crosstalk in the Starliner's wiring, with a system timing pulse getting through to the loudspeaker amplifier input? In itself not a problem, but possibly indicative of more quality problems....
    Reply
  • Sacchi
    Your article on tonight's Calypso touch down, is stating that it was 23:01, local time here in New Mexico, when Calypso touched down; that is an incorrect local time.
    It was 22:18 here in the Tularosa Basin, when Calypso touched down out at White Sands.
    Reply