The Boeing passenger spacecraft, which was due to arrive on its first flight to the space station and failed, returns to Earth. • Will it be able to land?

Boeing's passenger spacecraft, Starliner, which took off on Friday for an unmanned aerial flight to reach the International Space Station yesterday (Saturday), was unsuccessful. The spacecraft will return to Earth today (Sunday) and land with giant parachutes in the territory of New Mexico State in the southern US.

Photo: NASA

The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft engines that were supposed to be turned on after reaching the initial orbit did not operate, and in attempts to drive a lot of fuel was wasted, so it was decided not to continue the mission. According to NASA Director Jim Bridenstein, if astronauts were in the spacecraft, they could have repaired the fault.

The launch was conducted using an Atlas V launch missile from Cape Canaveral launch base in Florida. 15 minutes after launch, the spacecraft parted from the launch missile and began to orbit the Earth. About 50 minutes after launch, Starliner was scheduled to begin independent movement in the spacecraft engines to approach the International Space Station, but the spacecraft announced that this had already taken place, so the engines were not turned on. NASA and Boeing have announced that they are still trying to figure out what caused the scheduling malfunction and it is still difficult to estimate what the impact of yesterday's failure on scheduled space flights would be.

Boeing's failure could delay NASA's plans to use Boeing's spacecraft alongside SpaceX's manned spacecraft and disengage from Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2020 to reach the space station. An abandonment check is scheduled for January 11, and then a first manned flight will be set.

The Boeing incident on Tuesday also adds to the company's injury, which has been dealing with the Boeing 737 Max plane crash for nearly a year, which has been on the ground since March. Yesterday, US airlines announced that they would not board the aircraft on flights before June 2020. The Boeing crisis has caused the company's shares to rise only 3.4 percent this year, compared to the 28 percent average annual increase in the S&P 500 index.