Boeing's Starliner uncrewed spacecraft returns to Earth

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft landed at the U.S. state of New Mexico early Saturday after an approximately six-hour journey from the International Space Station (ISS). No astronauts were on board, as two astronauts were forced to remain in space until next year due to a technical malfunction.

The uncrewed spacecraft autonomously detached from the ISS at approximately 6:04 p.m. Eastern Time (1004 GMT) on Friday and landed at New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor at approximately 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time (1601 GMT) on Saturday, completing its first human spaceflight mission.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were aboard the Starliner spacecraft launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5 and arrived at the ISS on June 6.

During Starliner's approach to the orbiting laboratory, NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and faced issues with the spacecraft's reaction control thrusters.

Initially, the astronaut duo was scheduled to stay at the ISS for eight days. However, they have already spent three months in space due to technical complications.

NASA ultimately decided that sending the two astronauts home on Starliner was too risky. The new plan is to have the two astronauts ride home on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February 2025 and have Starliner return to Earth uncrewed.

The ISS, a football field-sized science lab some 402 kilometers in space, has seven other astronauts aboard who arrived at different times on other spacecraft, including a Russian Soyuz capsule. Wilmore and Williams are expected to continue doing science experiments with their crewmates.

Five of Starliner's 28 maneuvering thrusters failed with Wilmore and Williams aboard during their approach to the ISS in June, while the same propulsion system sprang several leaks of helium, which is used to pressurize the thrusters.

Despite successfully docking on June 6, the failures set off a monthslong investigation by Boeing, with some help from NASA, that has cost the company $125 million, bringing total cost overruns on the Starliner program just above $1.6 billion since 2016, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings.

Boeing's Starliner woes have persisted since the spacecraft failed a 2019 test trip to the ISS without a crew. Starliner did a re-do mission in 2022 and largely succeeded, though some of its thrusters malfunctioned.

The aerospace giant's Starliner woes represent the latest struggle that calls into question Boeing's future in space, a domain it had dominated for decades until Elon Musk's SpaceX began offering cheaper launches for satellites and astronauts and reshaped the way NASA works with private companies.

Boeing will recover the Starliner capsule after its touchdown and continue investigating why the thrusters failed in space.

But the section that housed Starliner's thrusters – the "service module" trunk that provides in-space maneuvering capabilities – detached from the capsule as designed just before it plunged into Earth's atmosphere.

The service module bearing the faulty thrusters burned up in the atmosphere as planned, meaning Boeing will rely on simulated tests to figure out what went wrong with the hardware in space.

(With input from agencies)

Read more: Boeing's Starliner capsule leaves ISS for Earth without astronauts