Boeing’s Starliner capsule returned to Earth on Wednesday, completing a critical uncrewed test trip to verify it is capable of transporting NASA humans to the International Space Station (ISS).
The gumdrop-shaped spaceship landed in a puff of sand in the New Mexico desert at 4:49 p.m. local time (2249 GMT), capping a six-day mission-critical to repairing Boeing’s credibility following previous failures.
“Just a spectacular touchdown in White Sands this evening,” remarked a NASA announcer on a live link, as applause erupted from ground control and a rescue team rushed to the landing spot.
The Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) was the final obstacle for Starliner to cross before another test flight with humans is scheduled at the end of the year. If this is successful, the spaceship will be able to resume normal service.
“We have a few things to work on…but I don’t see any showstoppers,” NASA’s Steve Stich, who supervises the commercial crew program, told reporters at a post-touchdown conference.
“We really do have the crewed flight test next on our focus,” he added.
NASA wants to qualify Starliner as a second “taxi” service for humans to the space station, a job that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has filled since its Dragon capsule successfully completed a test mission in 2020.
In 2014, shortly after the termination of the Space Shuttle program, both companies were awarded fixed-price contracts — $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX — at a time when the US was reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets for journeys to the ISS.
On Friday, a day after blasting off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, the Starliner docked with the orbiting station.
Over the weekend, astronauts on the station opened the hatch and “greeted” the capsule’s passengers: Rosie the Rocketeer, a mannequin with sensors to simulate what humans would have felt, and Jebediah Kerman, the ship’s zero-g indicator.
The spacecraft returned with about 600 pounds (270 kilograms) of supplies, including tanks that give breathable air to station crew members. These tanks will be reconditioned and reused on a future voyage.
Starliner de-orbited and expelled its expendable service module as it soared over the Pacific Ocean, leaving the surviving crew module to withstand temperatures of about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (1650 degrees Celsius) during atmospheric re-entry.
To read our blog on “NASA set a test of Boeing’s autonomous Starliner space capsule,” click here.
