NASA, which will mark its 10th anniversary next month, announced that Boeing, one of the agency’s most experienced contractors, has won the majority of available government funding to move away from total reliance on Russia to ferry astronauts into low Earth orbit.
At the time, Boeing was awarded a $4.2 billion contract by NASA to complete development of the Starliner spacecraft and conduct at least two, and potentially up to six, operational crew flights to rotate crew between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX was awarded a $2.6 billion contract for essentially the same scope of work.
A decade later, the Starliner program is at a crossroads after Boeing learned it would not be able to complete the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight with astronauts on board. NASA formally decided on Saturday that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on June 5 aboard the Starliner spacecraft, will return to Earth aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Simply put, NASA doesn’t have enough confidence in Boeing’s spacecraft after it suffered multiple thruster failures and helium leaks on its way to the ISS.
So what about Boeing’s multi-billion dollar contract? Will the company be able to fulfill a wide range of commercial crew contracts with NASA before the space station’s scheduled retirement in 2030? Unless the ISS’s lifespan is extended, it seems highly unlikely that Boeing will be able to fly six more Starliner missions. It is perhaps significant that NASA has only placed firm orders with Boeing for three Starliner flights after the agency cleared the spacecraft for operational use.
Boeing’s bottom line
Boeing made no public statement Saturday about its long-term plans for Starliner, but NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters he had received an assurance from Boeing’s new CEO. Kelly OrtbergThe company said it remains committed to the commercial crew program, and seeing it through will require a significant commitment from Boeing: Under the terms of its fixed-price contract with NASA, the company is obligated to pay the costs necessary to fix the thruster and helium leak problems and get Starliner flying again.
Boeing has already taken a $1.6 billion charge to its financial statements to cover delays and cost overruns on the Starliner program. That figure will increase because the company will likely have to redesign some elements of the spacecraft’s propulsion system to fix problems that arose during the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission. NASA has committed $5.1 billion to Boeing for the Starliner program, and the agency has already paid most of that money.
The next steps for Starliner are still unknown, which we will evaluate in more detail later. If Starliner’s test flight had concluded with a crew on board as expected, NASA had targeted Boeing to launch the first of six operational crew-change missions to the space station by August 2025. Given Saturday’s decision, it’s likely Starliner won’t fly again with astronauts on board until at least 2026.
Starliner safely carried astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station on June 6, one day after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. However, as it approached the space station, five of the spacecraft’s 28 Reaction Control System thrusters overheated and failed. The failures en route to the space station had NASA engineers concerned that Starliner might experience similar problems, or worse, when its control jets were fired to guide the craft on its return to Earth.
On Saturday, NASA’s top brass decided it wasn’t worth the risk: The two astronauts, originally scheduled for an eight-day stay, will now spend eight months at the orbital lab before returning to Earth with SpaceX.
If it’s not a question of trust, is it a question of judgement?
Boeing executives had previously declared the Starliner safe enough to return Wilmore and Williams, and Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner program manager, routinely downplayed the severity of the thruster problem during press conferences throughout the spacecraft’s roughly three-month mission.
So why did NASA and Boeing engineers reach different conclusions? “We’re looking at the data, and I think we have a different way of looking at the data and the uncertainties that are there than Boeing does,” said Jim Freeh, NASA’s undersecretary and the agency’s highest-ranking official. “This is not a matter of trust. It’s our technical expertise and experience that have to be balanced. We balance risk, not just with Starliner, but with everything.”
The people at the top of NASA’s decision-making have either flown in space before or had a front row seat to NASA’s disastrous decision in 2003 not to seek more data on the condition of the Space Shuttle. Columbia’During launch, a chunk of styrofoam escaped from the shuttle’s fuel tank and struck the left wing, damaging it. This killed seven astronauts, Columbia Similar regular technical problems and a culture of suppression of dissent led to the loss of the Space Shuttle during re-entry over East Texas. Challenger 1986.
“We lost two space shuttles because we didn’t have a culture of disclosure,” Nelson said Saturday. “We have urged all of our employees to speak up if they had any objections. Space flight involves risks, even at the safest and most routine of times. And test flights are inherently neither safe nor routine. So the decision to leave Butch and Suni on the International Space Station and return Starliner uncrewed is a reflection of our commitment to safety.”
Now, it seems the culture has truly shifted. With SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft now available to ferry Wilmore and Williams back to Earth, it was a relatively easy decision. Ken Bowersox, NASA’s director of space operations missions, said all of the managers he consulted supported returning the Starliner spacecraft to Earth unmanned.
But NASA and Boeing must explain how the Starliner program got to this point. The space agency approved the launch of the Starliner CFT mission in June, despite knowing that the spacecraft’s propulsion system was leaking helium. Once Starliner was in orbit, the leak would multiply and become a serious problem in itself, requiring corrective action before the next flight. Ultimately, the thruster issues outweighed the seriousness of the helium leak, and this is where NASA and Boeing will likely face their toughest challenge yet.
Boeing’s previous Starliner mission, known as Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), was scheduled to launch in 2022, dock with the space station, then return to Earth and parachute land in New Mexico. That test flight achieved all of its primary objectives, setting the stage for a crewed flight test mission this year. However, the spacecraft also suffered thruster issues on that flight.
During the OFT-2 mission, several of the reaction control system thrusters stopped functioning as Starliner approached the space station, and another failed on the return leg of the mission. Engineers thought they had solved the problem by installing a software fix provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne that adjusted the timing and tolerance settings of the propulsion system’s sensors.
But that didn’t work. The problem was elsewhere. Engineers discovered it during testing this summer, when Starliner was already in orbit. Firing the thrusters at White Stand, New Mexico, revealed that tiny Teflon seals in the valves swell when they overheat, restricting the flow of oxidizer propellant to the thrusters. NASA officials concluded that there was a small chance that the thrusters could overheat again, or worse, when Starliner leaves the station and returns to Earth.
“We’re clearly running this thruster at a higher temperature than it was designed to operate,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “As we started to look at the data a little more carefully, we think that running the thruster outside of its intended operating temperature was a contributing factor.”
