NASA has reassigned the crew flight on Boeing Space’s Starliner spacecraft scheduled for next year. The mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will now only include cargo as NASA wants to ensure all issues with the spacecraft are resolved. The changes were announced Monday after the agency made modifications to the contract awarded to Boeing.
In 2014, NASA offered Boeing a $4.2 billion contract for six crewed flights to the ISS under the Commercial Crew Program. The recent modifications have also reduced the number of missions to four, with the last two as options. SpaceX also won a $2.6 billion contract alongside Boeing and both companies launched their uncrewed demo flights in 2019, but the former completed a successful crew mission (Demo 2) in 2020 with way less funding.
“The next Starliner flight, known as Starliner-1, will be used by NASA to deliver necessary cargo to the orbital laboratory and allow in-flight validation of the system upgrades implemented following the Crew Flight Test mission last year,” NASA said in a statement, adding that the launch is targeted no earlier than April 2026.
Boeing Starliner’s chaotic crew mission
Starliner’s first crew mission – Crew Test Flight 1 – launched on June 5, 2024, but was flawed even before it began. The spacecraft suffered helium leaks prior to launch as well as in space before docking at the space station. Starliner also faced thruster issues prior to the rendezvous but crew members Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore somehow managed to reach their destination.
What was meant to be a ten-day mission lasted nine months due to the aforementioned issues, with SpaceX stepping up to bring the duo home on its Crew Dragon spacecraft in March 2025. Starliner departed the ISS early, touching down without the crew in September 2024.
#Starliner landed on Sept. 7 at 12:01 a.m. ET (Sept. 6 at 10:01 p.m. MT), concluding the flight test with an uncrewed spacecraft. Teams are now preparing to transport Starliner back to Florida. pic.twitter.com/MRCFPtbHSA
— Boeing Space (@BoeingSpace) September 7, 2024
Boeing has had a rocky start since the beginning. The 2019 uncrewed mission failed because Starliner was unable to reach the space station due to software and thruster malfunctions. It repeated the 2019 mission in 2022 and succeeded in docking at the ISS, although not without slight hiccups.
Meanwhile, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, has said that teams will be conducting rigorous testing of Starliner’s propulsion system “in preparation for two potential flights next year.”
About the contract modification, Stitch said that it will allow “NASA and Boeing to focus on safely certifying the system in 2026, execute Starliner’s first crew rotation when ready, and align our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on station’s operational needs through 2030.”
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