Boeing Starliner leaves ISS months later than planned

Boeing‘s Starliner detached from the International Space Station on Friday, months later than originally scheduled and without the two astronauts who put it into orbit in early June.

Instead, NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on the ISS for the rest of the year, returning to Earth in February aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.

It left the space station at 6:04 p.m. ET on Friday. The capsule is expected to take about six hours to return to Earth and reach its landing zone at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico. NASA said it will be visible from parts of western Mexico and the southwestern United States before landing.

NASA officials said Wednesday that in an effort to protect the ISS, the undocking process will be slightly different than when a crew is present, and there will be no astronauts on board to take manual control if necessary.

“We’ve got your back, and you’ve got this,” Williams told mission controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston before undocking Friday. “Get her back to Earth. Good luck.”

The return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule “Calypso” ended a test flight that was much longer than NASA had initially anticipated. And it didn’t go as planned. The agency postponed the spacecraft’s return several times, citing a desire to collect more data on its troubled propulsion system.

Originally expected to be in space for about nine days, Starliner has been on the ISS for about three months while Boeing investigates problems with the capsule’s propulsion system. Boeing executives have been adamant in press briefings that Starliner is safe for astronauts, despite the fact that the return was delayed several times during emergencies.

But NASA officials ultimately decided in late August to return Starliner empty, saying they wanted to “better understand the root cause” of the spacecraft’s problems.

The Starliner crew flight test was the final step for Boeing and a key addition for NASA, which hopes will give the two rival companies, Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the ability to alternate missions to the ISS.

Instead, the test flight set back Boeing’s progress on NASA’s commercial crewed spaceflight program and could threaten its future relationship with the program as it absorbs losses of more than $1.5 billion.