Boeing Starliner Spacecraft Returns To Earth Without Crew

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft left the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday evening and landed in White Sands, New Mexico, in the early hours of Saturday, without astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams. 

The Starliner autonomously undocked from the ISS at 6:04 PM Friday, New York time. Shortly after undocking, Starliner performed what is called the "breakout burn" to avoid an ISS collision.  

The uncrewed spacecraft landed in White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico one minute after midnight.

On August 24, NASA officials decided astronauts Wilmore and Williams would not return to Earth in Boeing's beleaguered Starliner spacecraft following a series of unexpected engine failures and helium leaks that turned what was supposed to be a week-long mission into a flawed three-month mission.

Both astronauts stranded on the ISS will return in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in February - extending a week-long mission on the ISS to eight months. 

Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, called Starliner's landing in White Sands "a bullseye landing," adding, "We've got some things we know we've got to work on."

For Boeing, this was the Starliner spacecraft's first test flight, which ended in a series of failures and massive public embarrassment since Elon Musk's SpaceX would rescue the stranded astronauts. 

"We're going to take our time to figure out what we need to do to go fly Starliner One right," Stich said.

Boeing is heading back to the drawing board on Starliner, and as for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin—who knows what's going on there? The bottom line: SpaceX still doesn't have serious competition.