Starliner is scheduled to detach from the International Space Station at 6:04 pm ET today, September 6, and return to Earth. If weather permits and the spacecraft leaves the ISS as scheduled, a parachute will slow its descent and airbags will inflate for a landing at White Sands Spaceport in New Mexico at approximately 12:03 am ET on September 7. Ground teams at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and the Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida can remotely operate the spacecraft if necessary, but Starliner will be unmanned and fully autonomous.
NASA recently announced that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the ISS on the first manned flight aboard Starliner, would return aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon instead. Wilmore and Williams were scheduled to fly to the ISS in June and spend a little over a week in the orbital laboratory. However, on the way there, five of the spacecraft’s steering thrusters failed, exacerbating a helium leak problem that had previously caused the launch to be postponed. Engineers on the ground, with the help of astronauts on the ISS, conducted tests to determine whether it would be safe for the crew to return to Earth aboard Starliner. Ultimately, NASA determined that there was “too much uncertainty” about the Starliner thrusters and that it would be safer for Wilmore and Williams to return aboard the SpaceX spacecraft.
The space agency will be broadcasting Starliner’s return live on NASA+, the NASA app and website, and can also be watched below. Coverage of the undocking procedure will begin at 5:45 PM ET, while coverage of the spacecraft’s deorbit burn, entry and landing will begin at 10:50 PM ET. NASA plans to livestream Starliner’s landing on September 7, beginning at 12:00 AM ET.
As for SpaceX’s Crew 9 mission, which will replace Boeing’s spacecraft at the ISS, it is not scheduled to launch any earlier than September 24. Instead of carrying the four astronauts as planned, it will carry two other astronauts — NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov — with two seats left open for a return flight in February 2025 with Wilmore and Williams.
