Boeing Starliner to return to Earth – without its astronauts
The issues with Starliner have no doubt been a blow to Boeing, which is suffering from financial losses as it struggles to repair its reputation following recent in-flight incidents and two fatal accidents five years ago.
After so many problems, a trouble-free landing will be a much desired outcome for the company – and for Nasa.
”After we get the vehicle back, we’ll go through a couple months of post-flight analysis,” said Steve Stich.
“There are teams starting to look at what we do to get the vehicle fully certified in the future.”
The US space agency has emphasised its commitment to Boeing’s spacecraft – having two American companies to take astronauts to space has been a key goal for Nasa for some time.
When their space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011, the US spent a decade relying solely on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to transport its crew and cargo – a situation Nasa admitted was far from ideal.
So in 2014, Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts to provide commercial space flights for Nasa astronauts – Boeing’s was worth $4.2bn while SpaceX received $2.6bn.
So far SpaceX has sent nine crewed flights to space for Nasa, as well as some commercial missions, but this was Boeing’s first attempt at a crewed mission.
Boeing’s Starliner had already been delayed for several years because of setbacks in the spacecraft’s development and two previous uncrewed flights in 2019 and 2022 also suffered technical problems.
But Nasa administrator Bill Nelson says he is 100% certain it would fly with a crew onboard again.
