NASA has been investigating the now-infamous Boeing Starliner incident for the reason that story dominated headlines in late 2024 and early 2025. The Starliner suffered malfunctions that stranded now-retired astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore for months. The company has now launched a report on what occurred, taking duty for its position within the mission’s failure.
“The Boeing Starliner spacecraft has confronted challenges all through its uncrewed and most up-to-date crewed missions,” stated NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a NASA blog post on Thursday. “Whereas Boeing constructed Starliner, NASA accepted it and launched two astronauts into house. The technical difficulties encountered throughout docking with the Worldwide Area Station had been very obvious.”
NASA has now labelled the mission a “Type A mishap,” which is outlined as a “whole direct price of mission failure and property harm larger than $2 million or extra,” or the place “crewed plane hull loss has occurred.” Each of these apply to the Starliner, which has price the company $4.2 billion up to now.
Isaacman additionally launched a letter addressed to all NASA workers on X. The letter outlined varied points with the mission, together with a “prior OFT thruster threat that was by no means totally understood,” disagreements amongst management about Williams and Wilmore’s return options, and the company’s delay in declaring the mission a failure, regardless of its high-profile nature clearly displaying it was.
These sentiments had been echoed in NASA’s press conference on Thursday.
NASA has dedicated to working with Boeing to make the Starliner launch-worthy once more and has been investigating technical points and addressing them for the reason that mishap early final yr. Isaacman admitted on the press convention that the “true technical root trigger” of the malfunctions nonetheless hasn’t been recognized, however NASA believes it’s near figuring out it.
“We’re not ranging from zero right here,” Isaacman informed a reporter throughout the press convention. “We’re sharing the outcomes of a number of investigations that can be coming to mild within the hours and days forward. Boeing and NASA have been working to attempt to perceive these technical challenges throughout that total time interval.”
A malfunction to recollect
The crewed Starliner flight was delayed several times earlier than lastly launching on June 5, 2024. The crew skilled malfunctions en path to the ISS, together with a number of thruster failures, which made docking notably worrying.
The Starliner’s return was delayed by two weeks earlier than lastly being despatched dwelling with out Wilmore and Williams, who had been left stranded on the ISS till returning with Crew-9 in March 2025.
The Starliner’s story is much from over. NASA and Boeing intend to ship the Starliner again to the ISS in an uncrewed resupply mission with a launch date at the moment set for April 2026.
