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the british broadcasting corporation (bbc) reported that boeing's starliner separated from the international space station on september 6, eastern time, and returned to earth without any humans on board.

after the "starliner" returned, a spokesperson for the national aeronautics and space administration (nasa) said that they were happy with the successful landing, "it would have been even better if it could go as planned (the two astronauts returned together)."

the starliner had a technical failure after launching with two american astronauts, barry wilmore and sunita williams, and was judged to be unsuitable for sending the astronauts back to earth.

the two people stranded in space will board the dragon spacecraft of the us spacex company and return to earth in february next year. the original eight-day space trip of the two will be extended to at least eight months.

every six months, nasa sends a crew of four astronauts aboard the dragon spacecraft to replace a group of astronauts stationed at the international space station. however, due to the sudden situation of the starliner, the dragon spacecraft originally scheduled to carry out the crew-9 launch mission in september will only carry two astronauts, american astronaut nick hague and russian astronaut alexander gorbunov. at that time, the two stranded astronauts will be assigned to this crew and work with them to carry out space station operations and maintenance for half a year, and then return on the dragon spacecraft in the next round of rotation.

nasa selected boeing and spacex in 2014 to develop spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the international space station. under fixed-price contracts (one-time payments), nasa is paying boeing up to $4.2 billion to develop the starliner spacecraft and spacex $2.6 billion.

musk's spacex completed certification testing in 2020 and has since carried out eight operational missions and won more contracts, while boeing's certification path is still far away after its project was about $1.6 billion over budget.

cnn pointed out that the return performance of the "starliner" will be crucial to boeing's future. if the spacecraft encounters an accident on the way back, or nasa ultimately decides not to grant certification for the vehicle, it will once again hit boeing's already severely damaged reputation and cause boeing to suffer millions of losses.

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