Without astronauts, Boeing's St

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, returning to Earth without its crew of US astronauts, Butch Wilmore, and Sunita Williams to complete a lengthy test mission marked by technical issues.

NASA astronauts, who became the first two to fly Starliner in June, remained on the ISS with seven other astronauts 400 km in orbit as Starliner autonomously departed the laboratory at 6:04 pm ET for a six-hour journey toward Earth.

The two astronauts bid farewell to a capsule whose propulsion system problems stretched their eight-day test into an eight-month mission. Stocked with extra food and supplies, Wilmore and Williams will instead return on a SpaceX vehicle in February 2025, NASA announced last week.