NASA has decided to return the Starliner capsule to Earth without it’s crew… and have competitor SpaceX bring them home next year. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They’ll then fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s Crew-9 mission.
Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September. This all follows helium leaks and thruster failures during the test flight of the Boeing craft back in June.
