NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, delivered a sweeping critique of the Starliner program on Feb. 19, after an astronaut mission that was supposed to be routine turned into months of delays for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the International Space Station. Isaacman said Boeing’s leadership and decision-making contributed to the spacecraft’s troubles and faulted NASA management for failing to act quickly enough to bring the astronauts home sooner.
Isaacman said Starliner’s problems had to be understood and fixed before any additional astronauts flew, setting a tone of heightened caution for the program’s next steps. In a move he said was intended to “get the record straight,” Isaacman said he upgraded the seriousness of Starliner’s troubled debut by declaring it a “Type A mishap,” which he said could endanger a crew. He tied the risk assessment to lessons from two past U.S. space shuttle disasters, saying the Challenger and Columbia investigations also involved cultural and leadership missteps.
In his remarks, Isaacman said he was also responding to internal pressure that contributed to the original risk classification. He said it was a mistake that Starliner was not designated a serious mishap from the start, and he said he was acting “just about doing the right thing.” He added, “This is about getting the record straight,” and said that Starliner’s problems had to be better understood and fixed before another mission moved forward.
NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya described how close the mission came to catastrophe when Starliner launched in 2024. Thruster failures and other problems almost prevented Wilmore and Williams from reaching the space station, and Kshatriya said “We almost did have a really terrible day,” referring to the possibility of a loss of life.
The two test pilots, both retired from NASA, ultimately spent more than nine months at the station before returning with SpaceX last March. Isaacman said that timeline reflected shortcomings not only at Boeing, but also inside NASA, saying NASA managers failed to intervene and speed up their return. He said Boeing’s troubleshooting would continue, and he framed the next phase as a test of whether both organizations could apply what they learned to crew safety before another crewed launch attempt.
At the same time, Boeing said the company had already begun corrective actions and changes inside its Starliner team. The company said its findings would help it move forward in ensuring crew safety and stressed that the Starliner program would continue. Boeing also said it had made progress on corrective actions for technical challenges and that it had driven significant cultural changes across the team, even as NASA remained focused on completing its assessment.
NASA issued a 312-page Starliner report while conducting a second fueling test of its moon rocket at Kennedy Space Center. Hydrogen fuel leaks spoiled an earlier dress rehearsal earlier this month and stalled astronauts’ first flight to the moon since 1972, and NASA’s Starliner review proceeded in parallel with those preparations, according to the report timeline described by NASA officials and the coverage.
With Starliner grounded and no timeline for when Boeing could launch on another supply run—described as another test flight intended to prove safety—SpaceX has remained the only U.S. taxi service for astronauts. Isaacman said time is running as NASA proceeds toward decommissioning the space station in 2030, and he predicted “endless demand” for multiple pathways to orbit once private outposts begin operating at scale.