Well it left the ISS without damaging it, but can it make it all the way back without damaging itself?

Boeing's beleaguered Starliner capsule leaves International Space Station without astronauts.

After months of turmoil over its safety, Boeing's new astronaut capsule has departed the International Space Station without its crew and headed back to Earth.

NASA's two test pilots stayed behind at the space station — their home until next year — as the Starliner capsule undocked 420 kilometres over China, springs gently pushing it away from the orbiting laboratory.

The return flight was expected to take six hours, with a night-time touchdown in the New Mexico desert.

"She's on her way home," astronaut Suni Williams radioed after Starliner exited on Friday local time.

Williams and Butch Wilmore should have flown Starliner back to Earth in June, a week after launching in it. But thruster failures and helium leaks marred their ride to the space station......

Starliner made a splash of the good kind:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx29wzk4r19o

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The Uber is on it's way to get Butch and Sundance.

SpaceX launches mission to rescue astronauts stranded at ISS.

A SpaceX spacecraft has lifted off to rescue two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) due to technical issues.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov took off on Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida to bring back Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore.

The Dragon spacecraft, operated by SpaceX, the private company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, is set to arrive at the ISS on Sunday.

Originally, astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were set to be part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.

However, they gave up their spots to accommodate Williams and Wilmore, astronauts stranded on the ISS due to technical issues with the Starliner spacecraft.

Williams and Wilmore were originally scheduled to return to Earth on June 13, after their Boeing Starliner capsule launched its first crewed flight from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5. But the Starliner had been plagued with issues, even before the June 5 launch. A previous launch attempt was scrapped on June 1 just moments before launch because of a ground control computer performance issue.....

Sundance has a problem.

Stranded NASA astronaut Sunita Williams has lost a significant amount of weight since June and she may still not be back on Earth until February.

NASA doctors are frantically trying to help stranded astronaut Sunita Williams pack on the kilograms after she has suffered a “significant” weight loss since arriving at the International Space Station in June.

Newly released photos show Williams, 59, appearing jarringly gaunt, with sunken cheeks and a noticeably thinner frame.

“She has lost a lot of weight,” said a NASA employee who is directly involved in the mission and has attended multiple briefings, New York Post reported.

“The weight has melted off her and she’s now skin and bones. So it’s a priority to help her stabilise the weight loss and hopefully reverse it.”.....

“She has lost a lot of weight,” said a NASA employee who is directly involved in the mission and has attended multiple briefings, New York Post reported.

How do you know the weight of an astronaut in space, a 'zero g' environment?

“She has lost a lot of weight,” said a NASA employee who is directly involved in the mission and has attended multiple briefings, New York Post reported.

How do you know the weight of an astronaut in space, a 'zero g' environment?

How Do Astronauts Weigh Themselves in Space? | Smithsonian

Currently, crews on board the space station use two devices to calculate their weight. The first is NASA’s Space Linear Acceleration Mass Measurement Device (SLAMMD), which relies on Newton’s Second Law of Motion. As astronauts Michael Barrett and Koichi Wakata explain in this video, a force from two springs mounted on an extension arm is generated against the astronaut. Because the force is a known quantity, the resulting acceleration is used (remember F=ma?) to determine the crewmember’s mass. The SLAMMD is accurate to 0.5 pounds.

The other device is Russia’s Body Mass Measurement Device (BMMD)