The NASA Office of Inspector General released an audit on Tuesday stating that Boeing's Starliner crew capsule is increasingly unlikely to be certified for operational flights to the International Space Station before 2025.

NASA officials agreed to all six recommendations issued by the inspector general. These include developing a schedule for the next Starliner flight and future crew missions, and ensuring the updated schedule allows sufficient time to resolve and document all issues from the 2024 Crew Flight Test. NASA officials anticipate completing these tasks by December 31, according to an appendix in the report.

The 2024 Crew Flight Test involved NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveling to the space station aboard Starliner. Managers reported approximately 100 in-flight anomalies during this test. The flight, initially intended as an eight-day stay, resulted in Wilmore and Williams remaining on the ISS for nine months after NASA determined the capsule was not reliable enough for their return. They ultimately returned to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman formally classified the 2024 crewed Starliner flight as a Type A mishap in February. Two senior human spaceflight officials left their posts that month following the classification. The inspector general reported that ambiguities in NASA requirements and delays in the appropriate mishap classification hindered the resolution of issues from the Crew Flight Test. The office stated that a flight without astronauts would not satisfy all of NASA's human-rating certification milestones.

The audit questioned nearly $128 million in payments to Boeing since 2019 for the future Starliner-3 crew rotation flight. Unresolved technical issues, according to the NASA Office of Inspector General, were "driven by NASA's and Boeing's overconfidence in Boeing's use of heritage systems, an unachievable schedule, and limited flight simulation data." The office also noted that "parachute anomalies remain a risk that requires continued monitoring."

NASA stripped Boeing of two of its six guaranteed crew rotation missions from the original 2014 contract, reducing the contract's value by approximately $500 million. One of the remaining four flights for crew transportation is now designated as a cargo-only mission. This decision means NASA will need to purchase an additional crew transportation mission to cover services Starliner-1 would have provided, at an estimated cost of $300 million.

The inspector general stated, "This decision increases NASA's costs to maintain a crewed ISS, along with compounding the ongoing delays with certifying the Starliner and reducing the number of contracted crew flights NASA has under the Commercial Crew contract." The office further suggested that human-rating certification might be delayed until 2027. NASA has awarded SpaceX additional missions with its Crew Dragon spacecraft to ensure the space station remains fully staffed.

Why It Matters

The potential delay in Starliner's certification to 2025 or even 2027 places the Boeing crew capsule a decade behind its original 2017 target for operational flights. This situation affects NASA's ability to maintain regular crew rotation to the International Space Station, which has an official retirement date of 2030. The issues have already resulted in NASA modifying its contracts, leading to an increase in reliance on SpaceX and additional costs for the agency to ensure continued access to the ISS.