NASA: Watch: NASA will livestream Boeing’s unmanned Starliner’s return to Earth today

Boeing’s Starliner The spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth today (September 6) without astronauts. This test flight mission, with astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore on board, was launched on June 5 and was originally scheduled to return within 10 days. However, due to helium leaks and engine failures on the spacecraft, the astronauts will have to remain in space until 2025. They are scheduled to return to Earth in February aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The livestream of the capsule’s return home can be followed on NASA’s YouTube channel. The process will begin at 5:45 p.m. EDT (3:30 a.m. IST September 7). Landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico is expected at 12:03 a.m. EDT (9:33 a.m. IST) the same day.
In 2014, both Boeing and SpaceX received multibillion-dollar contracts from NASA for astronaut flights to fill the gap left by the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Commercial manned flights were scheduled to begin in 2017, but technical and financial problems delayed the plan.
The first unmanned flight of the Starliner took place in 2019, but did not go as planned. The Boeing capsule was unable to reach the ISS due to technical problems. A follow-up mission was further delayed in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. The second attempt was more or less successful. While the test flight of the Starliner was a Docking with the ISSthere were still some docking problems. Authorities are investigating whether the cause of the engine problem is the same as the current problem, but no conclusive evidence has been found yet.
The Crew Flight Test was scheduled to launch in 2023, but was postponed after problems loading the parachute and cables wrapped in flammable tape were discovered. On May 6, 2024, the CFT’s original launch date, an investigation found a valve problem on Starliner’s rocket flight. Another attempt was thwarted due to problems with some ground equipment, but eventually the CFT left Earth on June 5, 2024, with Williams and Wilmore on board. In hindsight, those mission problems from the start now seem like an omen.
On June 6, things did not go smoothly either, as the Starliner experienced helium leaks before launch and all 28 engines of the reaction control system went offline during docking.