Boeing’s Starliner capsule lifted off from the ISS at 6:04 p.m. ET on September 6 and made a safe and soft landing September 7 at 12:01 a.m. at White Sands Spaceport in New Mexico. Although Calypso, as the capsule was called, flew to the ISS with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, there was no crew on board. At the end of August, NASA decided that there would be astronauts Return home with the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February for security reasons. Wilmore and Williams simply supported the capsule’s return home and watched as it re-entered and lit its descent. “You’ve got it. We’ve got your back, you’ve got this. Bring it back to Earth,” Williams said ground control said.
Astronauts flew on the Starliner as part of it first crewed flight This was intended to prove that the spacecraft is ready to regularly send humans to the ISS along with the SpaceX Crew Dragon. They were only supposed to stay in the orbiting lab for eight days, but the spacecraft’s service module started leaking helium on the way there. Some of the module’s thrusters were also faulty. The Starliner uses helium to pressurize its fuel tanks pusher to its thrusters maneuvering the spacecraft. Engineers on the ground in the last three months conducted tests was on the Starliner with the help of astronauts, but NASA ultimately decided to fly the Starliner home without a crew because it was unsure of the reliability of the thrusters’ performance.
Boeing was conspicuously absent during the Starliner’s post-landing press conference, and instead three NASA officials spoke about the landing. When asked why Boeing was not there and whether the relationship between the agency and the company was affected by Starliner’s problems, the representatives said that Boeing had reached out to NASA to represent the mission. They said all three have spoken with Boeing executives and that the company is committed to working with the agency. Steve Stich, manager of NASA Kennedy’s Commercial Crew Program, added that while they were all happy with the landing, some still wished the astronauts’ homecoming had gone as planned. Calypso.
Stitch, Joel Montalbano (NASA’s deputy associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate) and Dana Weigel (NASA’s International Space Station manager) all praised the Starliner for its successful docking and “bullseye landing”. They said they learned a lot from the mission, which achieved 85 to 90 percent of its goals, and stressed that it’s important to remember that things don’t always go as planned when it comes to test flights.
It will take about two weeks to return Calypso to NASA territory and about a week to retrieve all the data from the capsule. NASA and Boeing plan to analyze the data collected on the spacecraft’s systems from the time it is in orbit to its disassembly, re-entry and landing. They will then use this information to develop improvements for the spacecraft.
Unfortunately, they won’t be able to inspect the thrusters that malfunctioned during flight to the ISS, nor the “doghouses” that contain the spacecraft’s fuel system, which is leaking helium. They always planned to dump the service module containing these items when they re-entered, and it’s now at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. NASA previously said the problems were caused by engine equipment heating up more than expected during flight, causing container seals to loosen and helium to leak. In the case of the thrusters, the heat apparently caused the seals to bulge and restrict fuel flow, leading to downtime.
Stitch said he wouldn’t call these problems insurmountable – it just takes some time to fix them. They also cannot say now if the next Starliner flight will have a crew. For now, the agency is preparing for other missions. By the end of September, the SpaceX Crew-8 mission vehicle is scheduled to be unloaded and returned to Earth. SpaceX Crew-9 mission is expected to be launched. Crew-9 will fly with two astronauts instead of four to make room for Wilmore and Williams for its return flight in February.
