Boeing Starliner Return: Sunita Williams And Butch Wilmore Prepare Spacecraft For Uncrewed Journey Back To Earth

The crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday prepared Boeing Co.’s BA Starliner spacecraft for its uncrewed departure later this week, NASA said on Tuesday.

What Happened: Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who went to space via Starliner, reconfigured the spacecraft’s seats for an uncrewed landing and packed cargo inside it meant to reach back Earth, the agency said.

Two Crew-8 mission members also invited Williams and Wilmore into the Dragon spacecraft docked to the station and took them through the spacecraft systems and crew configuration as they are slated to return in February together with two Crew-9 members in another Dragon spacecraft.

Crew-8 will depart from the station later this month.

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Why It Matters: Last month, NASA announced that it would return Williams and Wilmore via a SpaceX vehicle in February.

The two astronauts launched into space on June 5 aboard Starliner. Though the two were supposed to return in about eight days, technical issues identified with the spacecraft while docking delayed the return journey, and the agency subsequently decided to scrap bringing the astronauts back on the Boeing spacecraft altogether.

The two will now return with Crew-9 astronauts in February. Crew 9 mission will launch to the space station no earlier than Sept. 24 with just two astronauts, instead of four as previously planned, to make space for Williams and Wilson on the return journey.

The Starliner is now slated to undock from the space station on Sept. 6 and land at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at about 12:03 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7.

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Photo courtesy: NASA