Troubled Boeing Starliner spacecraft gets a return date as NASA shuffles Crew-9
Boeing's troubled Starliner has a return date. NASA has polled "go" for the uncrewed spacecraft to undock from the International Space Station no earlier than 6:04 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 6.
After undocking, it will land at approximately 12:03 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7, at White Sands Space Harbor in the New Mexican desert.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched to the space station June 5 on Starliner, were supposed to be coming back onboard. However, after a three-month investigation into the spacecraft's malfunctioning thrusters, which failed to fire during docking to the space station, NASA decided not to allow the spacecraft to carry its astronauts home.
Instead, the astronauts will remain on the space station until February 2025, joining two of the Crew-9 astronauts who will arrive no earlier than late September. Then, in a humiliating turn for Boeing, they'll return on a SpaceX Dragon.
Still, it represents a major shift from what had been planned as a roughly week-long mission but will now be eight months.
NASA's main concern with Starliner was the reliability of its thrusters upon reentry. Should the thrusters malfunction at the wrong time, the crew could have ended up landing far off target ? or worse. At the wrong angle, they could have burned up in the atmosphere or even bounced off, becoming truly stuck in space.
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After Starliner lands, plans call for returning it to be shipped back to Boeing's facility at Kennedy Space Center. Boeing has work to do once Starliner lands, as NASA remains optimistic the aerospace company will still be able to provide a full crewed flight in the future.
Both SpaceX and Boeing were contracted by NASA in 2014 to provide transportation of NASA astronauts to and from the space station. The initial contracts were for $4.82 billion for Boeing and $3.14 billion for SpaceX. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft has successfully transported NASA crews since 2020. SpaceX's Dragon has also carried multiple private astronaut missions, and even has a cargo variant which is contracted to resupply missions to the space station.
Impact to NASA's Crew-9
With Williams and Wilmore set to return on the Crew-9 Dragon in February, NASA had cut two crew members as the Dragon is equipped to fly four astronauts for NASA. According to NASA, those two crew members who will fly to the space station as part of Crew-9 are NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Their launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 24.
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, who had originally been part of the Crew-9 mission, will instead be assigned to a future flight.
Hague and Gorbunov will bring the spacesuits needed for Williams and Wilmore to return home with them on Dragon in February.
Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at [email protected] or on X: @brookeofstars.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Boeing's Starliner to return to Earth in September uncrewed