NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test Starliner spacecraft is pictured docked at the Harmony module’s forward port while the International Space Station was in orbit 262 miles above the Egyptian Mediterranean coast. Credit: NASA
Undocking of the Starliner from the ISS is scheduled for June 25, leading to a historic landing at the White Sands spaceport. Mission teams are analyzing flight test data and a recent teleconference shared information about the upcoming landing, which will be the first landing of a crewed U.S. capsule on earth.
Last week, NASA delayed the return of the Starliner spacecraft from International Space Station (ISS) until June 22. From now on, the teams of NASA and Boeing are aiming for no earlier than 10:10 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25, for the undocking of the Starliner spacecraft. For the first undocking opportunity, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the first crew to fly aboard the Starliner, would land around 4:51 a.m. Wednesday, June 26, at White Sands Spaceport in New Mexico.
Mission teams supporting NASA’s Boeing crew flight test continue to review Starliner data from completed test objectives.
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts (top to bottom) Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pose for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft . Credit: NASA
In a conference call with the media Tuesday, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, discussed the flight test and upcoming return plans. Stich was joined by Dana Weigel, NASA International Space Station program manager; Mike Lammers, flight director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; and Mark Nappi, vice president and director of Boeing’s commercial crew program. Listen to a full replay of the conference call below.
After undocking and deorbiting, Starliner will descend under parachutes to land in the desert lands of White Sands. Airbags attached to the bottom of the Starliner will soften the spacecraft’s landing. This landing will mark the first time that an American capsule will land on earth with astronauts on board. A team composed of specialists from NASA and Boeing will recover the crew shortly after landing.
Wilmore and Williams docked the Starliner spacecraft at the space station’s forward port on June 6 and tested the spacecraft’s systems and performed tasks aboard the orbiting laboratory.
