Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, months after its original departure date and without the two astronauts it carried when it launched in early June.
Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a Nasa live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.
The spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere around 11pm ET at orbital speeds of roughly 27,400km/h (17,025mph). About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands Space Harbor, an arid desert in New Mexico.
I keep saying the same thing and get a bunch of people replying things like, “how do you know they want to see their kids?”
Yeah there’s a thanksgiving and a Christmas coming up that they’ll miss.
To be fair, I’ve met some absent parents that genuinely don’t care if they see their kids again, and unfortnately it is possible for someone like that to be capable of being an astronaut.
Sure, but I think that’s a different argument from “they won’t take seeing their kids again over months in space when it was supposed to be an eight-day mission because they’re in space.”