Boeing’s Totally Functional, Definitely Not Haunted Starliner Will Return to Earth on Friday

The Boeing Starliner will undock from the International Space Station on Friday and rejoin the surly bonds of Earth, careening through the upper atmosphere before slowing itself and eventually parachuting down toward the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It will not, notably, contain any crew.

Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will continue their eight-day stay on the ISS past its current three-month span well into 2025, when a vehicle made by someone other than Boeing — SpaceX — will bring them home. The decision to send the Starliner home without its intended passengers results from issues with its propulsion system that arose during its launch in June; both Boeing and NASA officials have said recently that after months of trying to troubleshoot the issues, they believe it could bring the astronauts home safely.

“We have confidence in the vehicle,” one NASA official said Wednesday, which is definitely the kind of thing one says when one has confidence in the vehicle. The decision to leave the astronauts on the ISS was not without controversy among the decision-makers; there was some “tension in the room,” apparently.

Definitely not adding to that tension was the spacecraft’s occupation by some sort of vengeful alien, ghost, or alien ghost. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker,” astronaut Wilmore told mission control recently. “I don’t know what’s making it.” The mystery was supposedly solved, traced to a mishap with the audio setup linking the Starliner with the space station, but, well, that’s just what the vengeful alien ghost wants us to believe.

In any case, the completely normal, functional, non-haunted or colonized Starliner will undock around mid-day New Mexico time, and will make a totally uneventful six-hour journey back home.