Boeing will try to fly its troubled Starliner capsule back to Earth next week

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station at the conclusion of an unpiloted test flight in May 2022. (credit: NASA)

NASA and Boeing are proceeding with final preparations to undock the Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station next Friday, September 6, to head for landing at White Sands Space Harbor in southern New Mexico.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were supposed to return to Earth inside Starliner, will remain behind on the space station after NASA decided last week to conclude the Boeing test flight without its crew on board. NASA officials decided it was too risky to put the astronauts on Starliner after the spacecraft suffered thruster failures during its flight to the space station in early June.

Instead, Wilmore and Williams will come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule no earlier than February, extending their planned stay on the space station from eight days to eight months. Flying on autopilot, the Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to depart the station at approximately 6:04 pm EDT (22:04 UTC) on September 6. The capsule will fire its engines to drop out of orbit and target a parachute-assisted landing in New Mexico at 12:03 am EDT (04:03 UTC) on September 7, NASA said in a statement Thursday.