NASA reveals new plan for Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft

Key Points:

• NASA has outlined a new plan to get Boeing’s Starliner capsule back on track, scheduling an uncrewed test flight no earlier than December, with crewed missions not expected before mid-2028 due to necessary thruster design modifications.
• The Starliner program will switch from retiring Atlas rockets to new Vulcan Centaur rockets, with NASA allocating an additional $359 million for upgrades and certification, aiming to maintain reliable crew access to the International Space Station (ISS).
• Currently, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is the only operational US spacecraft ferrying astronauts to the ISS, but SpaceX plans to retire Dragon in favor of its Starship vehicle, increasing NASA’s reliance on Starliner for future crewed missions.
• Starliner’s development has been hindered by thruster issues, culminating in a botched 2024 crewed test flight that left astronauts stranded in space for over nine months; NASA now classifies the incident as a “Type A mishap,” a serious designation shared with the Columbia and Challenger disasters.
• NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg will command the next Starliner crewed flight, emphasizing the need to address systemic engineering and integration failures that led to pre-launch hardware damage and the prior mission’s failures.