Starliner returns to Earth after a successful first trip to ISS

Boeing's Starliner spaceship successfully touched down at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico after delivering a load of supplies to the International Space Station. This success may establish Boeing as a second provider of commercial launch capabilities.

The Starliner docked with the International Space Station on Friday, staying for a long weekend while the crew unloaded the food and other necessities from the capsule's interior and performed in-person checks of its systems.

It descended to an altitude where it could start its descent with a burn. After dropping the service module, which provides power and propulsion during flight, it oriented its heat shield to take the brunt of the atmosphere.

Here is a view of Starliner's fiery reentry from a plane.

The craft popped its chutes and landed in the desert of New Mexico, where it was recovered by Boeing and NASA.

NASA and Boeing have collaborated on this image.

During ascent last week, there was a bit of a glitch with two maneuvering thrusters shutting down due to pressure problems, but other than that things went well. If Boeing can convince NASA that it has fixed the issue, it could be looking at a serious opportunity going forward.

The Commercial Resupply and Commercial Crew projects were meant to produce American-made spaceships capable of taking supplies and people to the International Space Station with as close to 100% as the U.S. started the process of removing itself from Russian Soyuz capsule years ago.

Boeing suffered the ignominy of an upstart company beating it by a large margin. We all know the risks of putting all our eggs in one basket, especially if that basket is owned by someone like Musk. Although the last few years have been far from Boeing's best in many ways, it has been hoped that the Starliner would eventually show up as a real alternative.

The market for taking things to space is enormous, and although the International Space Station is going out in the long term, there will be a successor of some kind, to say nothing of the numerous projects in the Artemis program. This was an important step for Boeing in proving it can provide these services.