Nearly two years after Boeing’s botched Starliner mission to the International Space Station, NASA put the mishap in the same category as the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters — and said the spacecraft wouldn’t carry another crew until dozens of corrective actions are taken.
Based on the findings from an independent panel's 311-page report, NASA classified the crewed test mission in 2024 as a Type A mishap, primarily because five of the thrusters in the Starliner spacecraft’s propulsion system failed during the capsule’s approach to the ISS. The crew was able to regain control of four of those thrusters, but NASA decided not to send astronauts back to Earth on the Starliner due to safety concerns.
Instead, the craft was flown back for a landing without crew, three months after the docking. The two astronauts who rode Starliner to orbit were stuck aboard the station for more than nine months while they waited for a ride back home inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
Today’s report faults NASA’s leadership as well as Boeing’s team.
“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took over as the space agency’s chief in December, wrote in a letter to NASA employees that was also posted to X. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.”
The report documented lapses in testing the hardware in advance of Starliner’s test flights — including an uncrewed test mission to the ISS that was conducted in 2022. Engineers relied too much on designs that were previously approved for different applications, the report said. Hardware was allowed to operate outside qualification limits, and NASA managers weren’t fully aware of what was going on.
“NASA’s limited-touch and management posture left the agency without the systems knowledge and development insight required to confidently certify a human-rated spacecraft, and insight versus oversight was not applied consistently,” Isaacman said.
Isaacman said NASA and Boeing had a bias toward letting the Starliner mission proceed — a bias that colored decisions that were made before, during and after the crewed mission. “Ultimately, these decisions were inconsistent with NASA’s safety culture,” he said.
The thruster problem and the costs of the botched flight justified reclassifying the Starliner mission as a Type A mishap, Isaacman said. Such mishaps typically involve loss of life, loss of control or the destruction of a spacecraft, or $2 million or more in damages.
An investigation into the direct causes of the technical anomalies experienced during the 2024 flight is continuing. “NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected, the propulsion system is fully qualified, and appropriate investigation recommendations are implemented,” Isaacman said.
In the meantime, NASA will rely on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to transport crew to and from the ISS, supplemented by Russian Soyuz flights. NASA and Boeing are making preparations for an uncrewed Starliner flight that will carry cargo up to the space station, with liftoff scheduled for no earlier than April.
Boeing said in a statement that it was “grateful to NASA for its thorough investigation and the opportunity to contribute to it.”
“In the 18 months since our test flight, Boeing has made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team that directly align with the findings in the report,” the company said.
Boeing insisted that safety “is and must always be our highest priority.”
“We’re working closely with NASA to ensure readiness for future Starliner missions and remain committed to NASA’s vision for two commercial crew providers,” Boeing said. Because Boeing has a fixed-price arrangement with NASA for the Starliner program, the company has lost more than $2 billion on the contract so far.
