Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has landed in New Mexico, wrapping up a three-month test mission that faced technical issues and forced it to leave the two astronauts it carried temporarily stranded in space.
The spacecraft touched down at White Sands Space Harbor in the New Mexico desert at 04:01 GMT on Saturday. The two crew members it had flown to space – Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – remained at the International Space Station (ISS) due to safety concerns with the craft.
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Wilmore and Williams, whose mission was initially planned for just eight days, must return to Earth on a vehicle from Boeing’s rival SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, in February 2025.
“It must be demoralising in a way when you’ve gone expecting to be up there for eight days and suddenly your mission turns into eight months,” Tanya Harrison, a fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Outer Space Institute, told Al Jazeera.
“At the same time this is a highly trained crew that knows that stuff like this can happen … they’re trained, they’re ready,” she said.
Read more: Boeing’s Starliner returns to Earth – leaving crew behind