Boeing's Starliner spacecraft
will come back to Earth on Wednesday evening (May 25), and you can watch its homecoming live.
Wednesday's landing will wrap
up Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), a critical uncrewed mission to the ISS designed to show that Starliner is ready to carry astronauts to and from orbit.
Boeing holds a NASA contract
to provide this taxi service, as does SpaceX, which has already launched four operational crewed missions to the ISS with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
OFT-2 kicked off
last Thursday (May 19), when Starliner soared into space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
The capsule arrived at the
ISS about 24 hours later, delivering more than 500 pounds of food and supplies to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab.
Starliner will bring down
to Earth about 600 pounds of cargo, including three of the station's dozen or so nitrogen oxygen recharge system (NORS) tanks, which provide atmospheric gases to the orbiting lab.