Isaacman faults Boeing, NASA after Starliner stranded crew in orbit for months

NASA released a 300-page investigative report on February 19, 2026, into Boeing’s troubled first crewed Starliner mission and formally labeled the flight a “Type A mishap,” the agency’s most serious safety classification, after a test flight meant to last about two weeks stretched into a months-long saga that sent the spacecraft home without its astronauts.  

New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency and Boeing both bear responsibility for what went wrong.   “While Boeing built Starliner, NASA accepted it and launched two astronauts to space,” Isaacman said, adding that the technical problems that surfaced as the capsule approached the International Space Station were “very apparent.”  

Starliner launched on June 5, 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight. NASA had planned for an eight- to 14-day mission. Instead, the flight extended to 93 days after the agency identified propulsion system anomalies while Starliner was in orbit. After reviewing flight data and running ground tests at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, NASA decided to bring the capsule back to Earth without Wilmore and Williams on board.  

Starliner departed the space station and landed in New Mexico in September 2024. Wilmore and Williams didn’t return safely to Earth until March 2025, on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, months after what was supposed to be a days-long mission.  

NASA formed an independent Program Investigation Team in February 2025 to examine technical, organizational, and cultural contributors to the Starliner test flight issues. The report was completed in November 2025, and NASA and Boeing have continued working since Starliner’s return to identify and address what went wrong, with root-cause analysis still underway.  

The investigation found a mix of hardware failures, gaps in qualification work, leadership missteps, and cultural breakdowns that combined to create risks that did not meet human spaceflight safety standards, NASA said.  

NASA’s decision to classify the mission as a Type A mishap was tied to the loss of maneuverability as the crew approached the space station and related financial damage, the agency said. NASA noted that no one was injured and the capsule regained control before docking, but said the designation reflects the potential for a significant accident.  

While directly faulting Boeing, Isaacman didn’t spare NASA, either. He said the agency’s push to keep two separate crew systems, one built by Boeing and the other by SpaceX, sometimes crept into decision-making. NASA, he said, is changing how it weighs risk and will hold leaders accountable so the same dynamic doesn’t repeat. The post Isaacman faults Boeing, NASA after Starliner stranded crew in orbit for months appeared first on AeroTime.

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