Boeing Starliner will return from space without a crew, NASA announces in long-awaited decision

NASA's two stranded astronauts will be brought home from the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX vehicle in February 2025, leaving the faulty Starliner spacecraft that took them there to return without a crew, the agency has said.

The announcement, made at a news conference on Saturday (Aug. 24), is the final nail in the coffin for Boeing's first Starliner Crew Test Flight, whose astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams have been stuck aboard the ISS since June, waiting for NASA officials to assess several technical issues that appeared during Starliner's voyage to space.

Originally planned to last as few as eight days, the first crewed test flight of Boeing's spacecraft was marred by numerous helium leaks and thruster faults on its outward leg, delaying its return by more than two months.

Now, following an agency-wide review, NASA has decided that there is too much uncertainty for the spacecraft to safely bring its crew home.

"NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with [SpaceX's] Crew-9 next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a news conference on Aug. 24. "I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision. We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS."

Starliner blasted off on its inaugural crewed test flight from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5. But not long after entering orbit, a number of faults appeared on the spacecraft — including five helium leaks and five failures of its reaction control system (RCS) thrusters.

This forced engineers to troubleshoot issues from the ground. Tests conducted at Starliner's facility in White Sands, New Mexico, revealed that during the spacecraft's climb to the ISS, the teflon seals inside the five faulty RCS thrusters likely got hot and bulged out of place to obstruct the propellant flow, according to NASA.