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08-09-2024
WASHINGTON: Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has completed its journey back to Earth but the astronauts it was supposed to be carrying remain behind on the International Space Station.
The empty craft travelled in autonomous mode after undocking from the orbiting lab.
The capsule, which suffered technical problems after it launched with NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.
They will instead return in a SpaceX Crew Dragon but not until February extending an eight-day stay on the ISS to eight months.
After Starliner’s return, a NASA spokesman said he was pleased at the successful landing but wished it could have gone as originally planned.
The flight back lasted six hours. After it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere parachutes were used to slow its descent at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on Saturday at 23:01 local time (05:01 GMT).
NASA said earlier that Butch and Suni were in good spirits and in regular contact with their families.
Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said both astronauts were passionate about their jobs.
“They understand the importance now of moving on and… getting the vehicle back safely.”
This was the first test flight for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft with astronauts on board but it was plagued with problems soon after it blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on 5 June.
The capsule experienced leaks of helium, which pushes fuel into the propulsion system, and several of its thrusters did not work properly.
Engineers at Boeing and NASA spent months trying to understand these technical issues, but in late August the US space agency decided that Starliner was not safe enough to bring the astronauts home.
In a news briefing following the landing, Steve Stich said: “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 wish it would have been the way we had planned it.
“We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board.”
He added there was “clearly work to do”, and that it would take “a little time” to determine what will come next.
The briefing panel consisted only of NASA officials. Missing, were two Boeing representatives who were supposed to be present.
When quizzed on the absence, NASA official Joel Montalbano said Boeing decided to “defer to Nasa” to represent the mission.
Instead, Boeing released a statement “to recognize the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing”.
It said Boeing will “review the data and determine the next steps” forward for the program.
Stich previously admitted there was “tension in the room” between Boeing and NASA while the decision not to bring the astronauts home on Starliner was being made, with Boeing arguing that their spacecraft could safely return with the pair on board.
“The NASA team, due to the uncertainty and the modelling, could not get comfortable with that,” he said.
The plan to use rival company SpaceX has brought with it a significant delay to the astronauts’ return. (Int’l News Desk)
