The Boeing Starliner spacecraft returns to Earth without a crew after undocking from the space station.

The Starliner capsule from Boeing undocked from the International Space Station on Friday evening and returned to New Mexico without any crew.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will continue to stay at the space station until February. It is predicted that they will return to Earth with a SpaceX crew that is likely to launch for the ISS later this month with two empty seats on what NASA humorously referred to as an "orbital Uber" on Friday.

NASA deemed it too risky to send the astronauts back on Starliner due to the capsule's history of thruster troubles and helium leaks. Originally, Wilmore and Williams were scheduled to return to Earth in June, just a week after launch, for an eight-day mission that turned into an eight-month ordeal.

NASA overruled Boeing's belief that Williams and Wilmore could safely return to the capsule after thruster tests.

NASA announced that Starliner was "in good control" and "on a perfect trajectory" after leaving the space station and heading back to Earth.

The spacecraft is expected to arrive at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico approximately six hours after its departure.

After Starliner left the space station, Williams reported that she was heading home.

The four-person mission for the space station, originally scheduled for the end of September, will feature NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were removed from the mission to allow Williams and Wilmore to return home on the SpaceX capsule.

After the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 and the tragic disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, which resulted in the death of all seven astronauts, the U.S. had relied on Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS.

In 2020, NASA contracted both SpaceX and Boeing to transport astronauts to the space station, and SpaceX began doing so with its rockets.