Boeing Starliner spacecraft landed in a New Mexico desert late Friday months after its scheduled return and without the two astronauts it was supposed to bring back Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch a NASA live stream showed nailing the critical Final Phase of its Mission the spacecraft re-entered Earth's atmosphere around 11:00 p.m ET at orbital speeds of roughly 27,400 km perh about 45 minutes later it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands space Harbor an arid desert in New Mexico the NASA astronauts Sunni Williams and Butch Wilmore should have flown the 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 instead they will remain at the International Space Station for the rest of the year and will return in February aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return Williams and Wilmore to the Starliner so the capsule contains their empty seats and blue space space suits along with some old station equipment the Starliner finally blasted into space on the 5th of June from Florida's Cape Canaveral space force station after unsuccessful Launches on the 6th of May and the 1st of June which were plagued with problems and earlier delays that included reports of helium leaks in the service module