((Automated translation by Reuters using machine learning and generative AI, please refer to the following disclaimer: (New throughout, adds remarks from press conference and details from recently released report) by Joey Roulette
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Thursday criticized Boeing and the agency’s leadership for their handling of the failed Starliner spacecraft mission that left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station for nearly a year. The U.S. space agency called a news conference on short notice and released a 300-page report examining the technical and supervisory failures behind the Starliner’s first crewed flight in 2024, a high-profile mission that kept NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the ISS for nine months for a test mission originally planned to last about a week.
“The Starliner has design and engineering flaws that need to be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not material,” Mr. Isaacman wrote in a letter to NASA employees, which he published in full on “cultural and organizational” of the report.
NASA retroactively classified the Starliner mission as a “Type A” accident, the agency’s most serious category of mission failure, triggered by factors such as damage to a spacecraft exceeding $2 million or the death or permanent disability of a crew member.
Boeing spent tens of millions of dollars repairing the Starliner after the mission. Wilmore and Williams, both veteran test pilots and astronauts, returned safely to Earth last year aboard a SpaceX craft after their faulty Starliner capsule returned empty.
“Above all, we’re trying to send a message about the right and wrong way to handle situations like this, so they don’t happen again,” Isaacman told reporters.
The report, which was completed in November, lists four previously known technical anomalies that led to the mission’s failure, including problems with Starliner’s propulsion system that complicated its docking with the ISS during the first hours of its mission.
