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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft approaches the International Space Station at some stage in a test flight.
(Image credit: NASA)
The first astronaut mission of Boeing’s Starliner taxi was a bumpier fling than NASA wanted to admit at the time.
The agency announced today (Feb. 19) that it has reclassified Starliner‘s Crew Flight Take a look at (CFT) as a “Type A mishap” — the most critical kind, in the same category as the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia tragedies.
CFT launched on June 5, 2024, sending NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station (ISS) for a planned 10-day stay.
Starliner reached the orbiting lab safely. On the way, then again, the spacecraft suffered a couple of thruster failures and temporarily misplaced “six degree of freedom” retain watch over — the ability to exactly maintain its desired orientation and trajectory.
“Flight rules were appropriately challenged, control was recovered and docking was achieved,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at some stage in today’s press convention, reading from a letter that he said he had excellent despatched to all NASA workers.
However, he added, “it is worth restating what should be obvious: At that moment, had different decisions been made, had thrusters not been recovered, or had docking been unsuccessful, the outcome of this mission could have been very, very different.”
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NASA prolonged the orbital stay of Williams and Wilmore a couple of occasions to leer Starliner’s thruster factors. In the cease, the agency decided to advise the capsule dwelling uncrewed, which passed off on Sept. 6.
Starliner landed safely, however its departure was now no longer totally clean. The spacecraft skilled “an unexpected crew module propulsion failure,” Isaacman said, and lacked “fault tolerance” in its thrusters all by way of the reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.
Williams and Wilmore, meanwhile, stayed aboard the ISS. They came dwelling on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in March 2025, having spent about 9 months in space instead of the originally planned 10 days. Each have since retired from the agency.
NASA recognizes 5 categories of mishap. From most to least critical, they are Form A, Form B, Form C and Form D, as properly as “close calls.”
The dividing traces between them are clearly outlined. For example, any incident that causes at least $2 million of damages or other unplanned mission expenses, or involves unexpected “departure from controlled flight,” is a Form A mishap.
CFT clearly met those criteria, Isaacman said today. However NASA did now no longer classify the mission as a Form A mishap at some stage in and quickly after CFT, apparently because agency officials had been too targeted on getting Starliner certified to sail operational astronaut missions to the ISS.
“Concern for the Starliner program’s reputation influenced that decision,” Isaacman said today. “Programmatic advocacy exceeded reasonable balance and placed the mission, the crew and America’s space program at risk in ways that were not fully understood at the time decisions were being contemplated. This created a culture of mistrust that can never happen again, and there will be leadership accountability.”
With CFT officially being designated a Form A mishap, he added, “the record is now being corrected.”
SpaceX has been carrying astronauts to and from the ISS since 2020. However NASA — and, more specifically, its Commercial Crew Program (CCP) — wants another private American astronaut taxi available to construct redundancy. Indeed, that has been the plan since 2014, when SpaceX and Boeing acquired astronaut-flying contracts from the CCP.
NASA chartered an autonomous team to investigate the CFT factors in February 2025. That community performed its file in November, and NASA lately released it to the general public. And in the following week or so, Isaacman said, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel will transient Congress on CFT and the file’s findings.
However the investigation continues. NASA and Boeing are aloof working to settle out the basis cause of Starliner’s thruster factors, and the car may well now no longer carry astronauts again till those concerns have been fastened, Isaacman wired. (The spacecraft is at reveal targeted to sail an uncrewed cargo mission to the ISS no earlier than this April, although an official launch date has now no longer yet been space.)
The International Space Station’s days are numbered. This may be retired in 2030, death a fiery death in Earth’s atmosphere over the spacecraft graveyard known as Point Nemo.
So Starliner’s window to sail astronauts to the orbiting lab may cease up being relatively speedy. However Isaacman sees broad utility for Starliner past the ISS’ lifetime.
“Certainly one of our high priorities right here, per President Trump’s National Space Policy, is to ignite the orbital economic system, which with a little bit of luck necessitates varied commercial space stations in low Earth orbit,” he said. In that case, “America benefits by having multiple pathways to take our crew and cargo to orbit.”
Michael Wall is a Senior Space Author with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, however has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Earlier than changing into a science author, Michael labored as a herpetologist and flora and fauna biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the College of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the College of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the College of California, Santa Cruz. To gain out what his latest mission is, you can notice Michael on Twitter.
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