It was a watery success! In ideal use, the capsule will deploy parachutes and gently land safely on, well, land. But the conditions for returning from space aren’t always ideal, so it’s important to make sure that an oceanic landing works too. The Langley facility is also NASA’s foremost testing ground for hurtling otherwise-fine flying machines at the ground to study how they’ll break. Last summer at Langley, NASA crashed airplanes to see where they should put emergency beacons on them so they’ll be most effective after a wreck. After that, NASA even put together an almost literal greatest hits of crash test videos. Maybe after the Starliner’s splashdown, they’ll have enough footage for a water-themed compilation next year. Watch it below:
