There is currently a date for Boeing's Starliner capsule to return home. NASA said Wednesday evening, August 29, that Starliner will leave the International Space Station (ISS) no early than Friday, September 6, assuming favorable weather and no unanticipated technical difficulties.

The capsule is scheduled to undock on September 6 at 6:04 p.m. EDT (2204 GMT) and land under parachute in White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, six hours later, assuming all goes as planned.

With Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, two NASA astronauts, Starliner embarked on its maiden crewed flight on June 5 and headed for the International Space Station. A day later, the capsule successfully docked, but not without drama. Starliner had a number of helium leaks, and five of its 28 reaction control system thrusters failed on the journey to the orbiting laboratory.

The Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission of Starliner was only expected to last ten or so days. However, as NASA and Boeing investigated the thruster problem and tried to figure out what caused it, as well as if it may resurface on Starliner's return to Earth, they continued to extend the capsule's orbital stay.

NASA ultimately determined that it would be too dangerous to put Williams and Wilmore back on Starliner, and this past weekend the agency made the announcement that the two astronauts would return home in February of the next year aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. (Crew-9, scheduled for launch next month, will send two astronauts to the ISS aboard that Dragon.) In the meantime, the unmanned Boeing capsule would come home.

But until today, we didn't know when Starliner was expected to depart. This information was released following a collaborative NASA and Boeing flight readiness evaluation.