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After month of delays and uncertainty , Boeing ’s Starliner abridgment has returned from the International Space Station , touching down in White Sands Space Harbor , New Mexico , just after midnight on Saturday .
The ejector seat returned autonomously to Earth without its two crowd members , NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams , who will stay aboard the station until February . The blank agency determined deep last calendar month that the pair will make their journey back to Earth on board a SpaceX Dragon ejector seat , after Starliner experiencedtechnical issues early in the mission .
At a post - flight press conference on Saturday , NASA ’s commercial-grade crew platform managing director Steve Stich called the flight “ darn near flawless . ” He tote up that the successful mission provoked motley feelings among faculty .
“ From a human position , all of us find happy about the successful landing , but then there ’s a piece of us , all of us , that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it , ” he tell . “ We had planned to have the missionary station land with Butch and Suni on plank . ”
Even though the spacecraft departed the station empty , the stakes were still extremely high for Boeing and NASA to nail this return mission . An abortive flying very well could ’ve spell the goal of the Starliner program altogether ( Boeing has already pouredover $ 1.5 billion into the capsule ’s maturation , in add-on to the $ 4.2 billion contract NASA awarded to the firm a decennium ago ) . But this flawless flight has paved a plausible path for Starliner to continue , though engine driver will want to modify the vehicle to ensure that the technical problems — which included malfunctioning thrusters and several helium leaks in the actuation system — do not reoccur on future flight .
Boeing example are proceed pixilated - lipped on the time to come of the programme for now . Although two Boeing executive were schedule to seem at the press group discussion , they offset at the last mo . Instead , Boeing provided a publish statement to reporters : “ I want to recognise the piece of work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and dependable undocking , deorbit , re - entry and landing , ” Mark Nappi , program manager of Boeing ’s commercial gang program , said . “ We will review the information and determine the next steps for the computer programme . ”
Throughout the 90 - plus days Starliner has been on orbit , Boeing has insisted that the ejector seat was safe enough to carry the astronauts home . On August 2 , the caller posted anupdate on its websitethat amounted to a public defense of the condensation .
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“ Boeing remains confident in the Starliner ballistic capsule and its ability to hark back safely with crew , ” the update said . “ We proceed to support NASA ’s request for additional testing , data , analysis and inspection to aver the ballistic capsule ’s dependable undocking and landing place capabilities . Our authority is based on this abundance of valuable testing from Boeing and NASA . ”
Stich provided a little more contingent , saying that Boeing and NASA will have a “ fiddling bite better melodic theme ” of the overall docket for move fore in a calendar month or so , after they have clip to conduct additional testing and recapitulation data .
