Airbags deployed. The main parachutes opened. Moments later, Starliner plopped safely onto the ground of the New Mexico desert. The beleaguered Boeing spacecraft’s three-month odyssey was over . But its crew remains up on the International Space Station and Boeing has a lot of work ahead to rebuild confidence.
“We’re really excited to have Calypso back on the ground,” said Steve Stich, manager of the Commercial Crew Program. “You know, Suni told the ground team, ‘ You’ve got this. Bring Calypso back’ . And that’s what they did tonight.”
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who flew to the International Space Station onboard Starliner in June , had watched earlier as their ride, named “Calypso,” blazed through the atmosphere without them − live cameras from the International Space Station showing the spacecraft heading back to Earth during the final 10 minutes of its decent. Now, the two astronauts will remain onboard the space station until February, returning home with Crew-9 on a Dragon, the spacecraft built by Boeing’s competitor, SpaceX.