The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), touching down in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 10:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6).
The landing was long-delayed, coming more than three months into an orbital mission originally expected to last about 10 days. And, while Starliner launched with two NASA astronauts aboard — Williams and Butch Wilmore — nobody rode it home.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
The roots of the just-completed mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), go back a decade. In 2014, NASA gave SpaceX and Boeing multibillion-dollar contracts to finish work on their astronaut taxis — capsules known as Crew Dragon and Starliner, respectively.
The agency wanted one or both of those vehicles to start flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) by 2017, reestablishing a homegrown orbital human spaceflight capability — something the U.S. had lacked since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.
Source: www.space.com
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