NASA reveals new plan for Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft and commander of future mission

By Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — Months after NASA’s leadership issued a scathing indictment of Boeing’s Starliner capsule — saying the botched 2024 test flight that left two astronauts in space months longer than expected was a disaster in league with Columbia and Challenger — the space agency has revealed a new road map to get Starliner on track for regular flights.

The agency has indicated for some time that Starliner’s next flight would be uncrewed, and NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said Monday that the mission will take place no earlier than December. If that goes well, the earliest Starliner could fly its next crew mission is mid-2028, officials said.

“Before crewed operations resume,” Isaacman said, some thrusters require “a design modification.”

Starliner will also need a new ride to orbit, as the Atlas rockets that have carried it to space in the past are soon retiring. NASA said Monday the agency is working with Boeing and Atlas provider United Launch Alliance to certify its new Vulcan Centaur rockets for crewed missions as a replacement.

NASA is expecting to pay an additional $359 million for Starliner’s upgrades and Vulcan certification, the agency said Monday.

Monday’s news conference marked the first substantial update about the Boeing Starliner program in months. And it comes as NASA is looking to fill out a long schedule of missions to the International Space Station, which is slated to be decommissioned in the early 2030s but requires a rotating crew of astronauts to maintain operations while in orbit.

Reliance on SpaceX

Currently, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is the only operational US vehicle capable of carrying astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost. NASA was nearing the end of its contract with SpaceX for those flights before purchasing three additional missions for $946 million earlier this month.

But SpaceX has made clear it intends to retire its Dragon spacecraft program as it shifts focus to Starship, the gargantuan launch vehicle that aims to send humans to the moon and Mars.

“I do not think it’s a secret that SpaceX intends to sunset older platforms like Falcon and Dragon as they concentrate on their next generation capability, Starship,” Isaacman said Monday. “Given our extensive history with Starliner and the taxpayer investment already made, we believe it represents the fastest path to preserving reliable crewed access to low Earth orbit.”

SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell previously acknowledged that Dragon would be discontinued, saying in 2024 that she expects Dragon will cease operations sometime in the 2030s.

It’s not clear whether SpaceX would move to retire Dragon if NASA still needed service flights to the ISS.

But when asked about the matter recently, Shotwell was blunt: “Boeing has been paid — I think probably more than we have been paid — to develop their human capsule,” she said at the All-In Summit earlier this month.

SpaceX has been awarded $5.92 billion in NASA contracts for a demo mission and 17 operational flights, while Boeing has been given $4.82 billion with a mandatory order for just four flights, not including the additional $359 million for the Starliner program revealed Monday. (Dana Weigel, manager of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, said Monday the space agency is also reopening the possibility of requiring two additional flights from Boeing under its current contract.)

“We’re just going to let them have some business,” Shotwell said of Boeing.

Starliner’s botched mission

Starliner has been under development for more than a decade, and problems with the vehicle’s thrusters have plagued its development. Issues cropped up during uncrewed test flights and NASA’s inaugural Boeing Crew Flight Test in June 2024, which included astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.

Starliner ran into problems shortly after reaching orbit on that mission. Wilmore and Williams were expected to fly the spacecraft to the ISS and dock for about a week before returning home.

Those plans were quickly dashed, however, when the Starliner spacecraft experienced helium leaks and thruster outages en route to the orbiting laboratory. Ultimately, NASA determined the spacecraft was not safe enough to return Williams and Wilmore home, and they became part of the next space station crew rotation, eventually returning home on a SpaceX capsule. The astronauts ultimately spent more than nine months in orbit.

Isaacman announced Monday that NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg will command the next crewed Starliner mission. Hoburg mentioned Williams and Wilmore’s ordeal at the news conference, saying the astronauts “conducted themselves with the utmost of professionalism, competence, and humility throughout the mission. They are American heroes, and I am deeply humbled to follow in their footsteps.”

Hoburg added that what “keeps me up at night” is not issues with Starliner’s hardware.

“It’s the underlying pattern,” Hoburg said. “It was inadequate systems engineering and integration, creating gaps in hardware qualification. In the case of the helium leaks and the crew module (thruster) failures, the unqualified environment was actually on the ground.”

It’s now clear that Starliner’s thrusters were damaged before ever launching, he said, and the issue should have been caught and prevented before the vehicle got to the launchpad.

During the Starliner test flight, NASA and Boeing insisted the astronauts’ lives were never in danger. But recently Isaacman, who took over the agency in December, moved to classify the botched test flight as a “Type A mishap.” That’s a designation that NASA defines as an incident that results in more than $2 million of damage, the loss of control or destruction of a vehicle, or a loss of life.

The Columbia and Challenger Space Shuttle disasters were also classified as “Type A” incidents.

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