Last weekend, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration officially decided to return Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft to Earth without a crew.

Astronauts of the first manned mission Starliner — Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stranded on the orbital outpost, will return home with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft Crew-9 in February 2025. That means their stay at the International Space Station has been extended from a planned eight-day expedition to an eight-month journey.

In principle, NASA’s decision wasn’t a huge surprise, given the Boeing spacecraft’s numerous challenges. The decision to abandon Starliner likely wasn’t easy, and it represents a major vote of no confidence in one of NASA’s largest contractors. It’s a nightmare for the space agency, which has already invested billions of dollars in the Boeing spacecraft’s development.

The truth is that NASA doesn’t need Starliner to send crews to the ISS, so it’s not yet known whether Starliner will have the chance to deliver astronauts to the orbital outpost and return them.