NASA has been investigating the now-infamous Boeing Starliner incident since the 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 agency has now released a report on what happened, taking responsibility for its role in the mission's failure.
"The Boeing Starliner spacecraft has faced challenges throughout its uncrewed and most recent crewed missions," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a NASA blog post on Thursday. "While Boeing built Starliner, NASA accepted it and launched two astronauts into space. The technical difficulties encountered during docking with the International Space Station were very apparent."
NASA has now labelled the mission a "Type A mishap," which is defined as a "total direct cost of mission failure and property damage greater than $2 million or more," or where "crewed aircraft hull loss has occurred." Both of those apply to the Starliner, which has cost the agency $4.2 billion to date.
Isaacman also released a letter addressed to all NASA employees on X. The letter outlined various issues with the mission, including a "prior OFT thruster risk that was never fully understood," disagreements among leadership about Williams and Wilmore's return options, and the agency's delay in declaring the mission a failure, despite its high-profile nature clearly showing it was.
These sentiments were echoed in NASA's press conference on Thursday.
NASA has committed to working with Boeing to make the Starliner launch-worthy again and has been investigating technical issues and addressing them since the mishap early last year. Isaacman admitted at the press conference that the "true technical root cause" of the malfunctions still hasn't been identified, but NASA believes it is close to identifying it.
"We're not starting from zero here," Isaacman told a reporter during the press conference. "We're sharing the results of multiple investigations that will be coming to light in the hours and days ahead. Boeing and NASA have been working to try and understand these technical challenges during that entire time period."
A malfunction to remember
The crewed Starliner flight was delayed several times before finally launching on June 5, 2024. The crew experienced malfunctions en route to the ISS, including several thruster failures, which made docking particularly stressful.
The Starliner's return was delayed by two weeks before finally being sent home without Wilmore and Williams, who were left stranded on the ISS until returning with Crew-9 in March 2025.
The Starliner's story is far from over. NASA and Boeing intend to send the Starliner back to the ISS in an uncrewed resupply mission with a launch date currently set for April 2026.
