TechCrunch Space: Boeing’s Starliner returns to Earth

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The Starliner story is finally over — for now. Just after midnight on Saturday, Boeing’s Starliner capsule returned from the International Space Station and landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

The capsule returned to Earth without its two crew members, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will remain on the station until next February. The space agency decided late last month that the pair would return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule after the Starliner mission encountered technical problems in its early days.

At a post-flight press conference on Saturday, NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich described the flight as “almost flawless.” He said the successful mission produced mixed emotions among the crews.

“From a human point of view, we are all happy about the successful landing, but then there is a feeling inside all of us that we wish it had gone exactly the way we had planned,” he said. “We had planned to land the mission with Butch and Suni.”

There’s just one small non-public detail in this story: By now, you’ve probably heard that the first launch of Blue Origin’s huge New Glenn rocket won’t be for NASA. That rocket was scheduled to launch two spacecraft to Mars for NASA during an eight-day window that opens on Oct. 13. But NASA announced Friday that it is pushing the mission, called ESCAPADE, to spring 2025, citing potential cost and technical issues with defueling the two satellites.

What I’m hearing is that there was an ATP (authority-to-proceed) meeting to refuel/not refuel the spacecraft the day before NASA formally postponed the mission. While this decision undoubtedly depends on the readiness of the launch vehicle, refueling the spacecraft is a critical juncture. It’s understandable that they chose to simply delay rather than take the risks – technical, financial, etc. – of running them out of fuel.

This Week in Space History

This week, we’re remembering the tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Did you know: There was only one American outside the world when the attacks happened? NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was on the International Space Station at the time, and as soon as he learned about the attacks, he immediately went to take some photos of the site from space.

“The smoke seemed to form a strange bloom at the base of the column drifting south over the city. After reading one of the news articles we recently received, I think we were looking at New York at the time of the second tower collapse or shortly thereafter. How eerie…” – Frank Culbertson