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February 19, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n NASA says a litany of failures led to 2024 Boeing Starliner astronaut stranding<\/p>\n On Thursday NASA leadership outlined how 2024\u2019s glitch-plagued Boeing Starliner mission jeopardized astronaut welfare and the space agency\u2019s culture of safety and accountability<\/p>\n By Claire Cameron edited by Lee Billings<\/span><\/p>\n Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner ship approaches the International Space Station during the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 mission on May 20, 2022.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s own decision-making and leadership were partly to blame for the conditions that led to the months-long stranding of two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024. That\u2019s the major takeaway from a report released on Thursday by the space agency that summarizes investigations\u2014some still ongoing\u2014of what went wrong before, during and after the botched crewed mission to test the readiness of Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.<\/p>\n \u201cStarliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware,\u201d said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman at a press conference on Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.\u201d<\/p>\n NASA has designated the incident a \u201cType A mishap\u201d\u2014the same categorization applied to the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, which resulted in the combined deaths of 14 astronauts.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Starliner was conceived under NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program in 2010 as a means to lift people and cargo into low-Earth orbit. Its first and second uncrewed orbital tests, in 2019 and 2022, each revealed unexpected performance shortfalls with Starliner\u2019s thrusters.<\/p>\n Still, despite these thruster issues and other technical problems, NASA pushed ahead with a crewed test flight, launching Wilmore and Williams on June 5, 2024. The mission\u2019s Starliner spacecraft, named Calypso, was supposed to dock at the ISS for an eight- to 14-day stay before it returned to Earth. But Calypso\u2019s thrusters malfunctioned during docking, and the spacecraft temporarily lost its ability to fully control its motion and position in space\u2014a moment that, according to Isaacman and other sources, could easily have ended in disaster. Wilmore and Williams eventually returned to Earth in March 2025 on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n Isaacman emphasized during the press conference that NASA would continue to work with Boeing to resolve Starliner\u2019s problems. But he also took pains to lay out how miscommunication and NASA\u2019s lax oversight of Boeing, a long-time private contractor for the agency, may have contributed to Starliner\u2019s life-threatening failures.<\/p>\n \u201cWe accepted the vehicle; we launched the crew to space. We made decisions from docking through postmission actions. A considerable portion of the responsibility and accountability rests here,\u201d Isaacman said.<\/p>\n The report details how, during the incident, mission personnel on the ground had felt overwhelmed by frequent meetings and had voiced concerns over data transparency and inclusion, with personnel outside of Boeing and NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program feeling particularly excluded. According to the report, some of those personnel stated that astronaut safety was not as central as it might have been.<\/p>\n At the same Thursday press conference, Isaacman said that the focus on proving Starliner\u2019s fitness for flight among some in NASA\u2019s leadership caused a \u201cbreakdown in culture, created trust issues. And where leadership failed was to recognize that this was taking place and to intervene and course correct.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 19, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm NASA says a litany of failures led to 2024 Boeing Starliner astronaut stranding On Thursday NASA leadership outlined how 2024\u2019s glitch-plagued Boeing Starliner mission jeopardized astronaut welfare and the space agency\u2019s culture of safety and accountability By Claire Cameron edited by Lee Billings Boeing\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[2536,6502,4643,4644,23164,3331,19939,377],"class_list":{"0":"post-44737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-astronaut","9":"tag-boeing","10":"tag-failures","11":"tag-led","12":"tag-litany","13":"tag-nasa","14":"tag-starliner","15":"tag-stranding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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