NASA keeps Starliner flights on hold
- NASA’s May 1 station flight-plan update left Boeing’s Starliner off the firm 2026 launch calendar, keeping its next ISS mission unscheduled. - The next flight is now planned as Starliner-1, an uncrewed cargo mission after a 93-day 2024 test exposed thruster and helium-system failures. - That matters because NASA still wants two U.S. crew vehicles, but Starliner must clear safety fixes before astronauts fly again.
Boeing’s Starliner is still grounded in practical terms — not because NASA canceled it, but because NASA still does not trust it enough to put a date on the next flight. The clearest sign came in the agency’s May 1 update to the International Space Station schedule. NASA listed firm targets for SpaceX cargo runs, a Soyuz launch, and Crew-13. Starliner got no date at all. (nasa.gov) ### What changed this week? NASA and its partners published an updated 2026 ISS flight plan on May 1. It moved SpaceX Crew-13 up to mid-September, kept other cargo missions on the board, and left Starliner out of the dated lineup. That is the news here — Starliner is not back in the rotation yet. (nas([nasa.gov) Why is “no date” a big deal? Because NASA had already been talking about Starliner’s next mission as an uncrewed one. The agency and Boeing spent the past year shifting from “get this ready for routine astronaut flights” to “prove the spacecraft is safe again first.” When a vehicle is healthy, NASA usually slots it into the station traffic plan. Starliner is still in the penalty box. (nasa.gov) ### What went wrong on the last flight? A lot, basically. Starliner launched its first crewed test flight on June 5, 2024 with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. The mission was supposed to last 8 to 14 days. It stretched to 93 days after propulsion problems showed up in orbit. NASA’s investigation says five service-module reac(nasa.gov)ther thruster issue during descent wiped out fault tolerance. (nasa.gov) ### Why did that force such a reset? Because the spacecraft came home without its crew. NASA decided Starliner should return uncrewed in September 2024, and Wilmore and Williams later came back on SpaceX Crew-9 in March 2025. That is not a normal certification hiccup — it is a sign that NASA judged the remaining risk too high for astronauts. (nasa.gov) ### What did NASA’s investigation actually say? The February 2026 findings were blunt. NASA called the mission a Type A mishap — the agency’s most serious accident category — and said the problems were not just hardware. Investigators pointed to qualification gaps, leadership mistakes, and cultural breakdowns alongside the propulsion failures. In plain English, NASA thinks this was a system problem, not one bad part. (nasa.gov) ### So what is Boeing doing now? Ground testing. NASA said in March 2025 that more than 70% of flight observations and anomalies had been closed at program control boards, but the major propulsion issues were still open and needed more testing at White Sands. Those tests were meant to validate thermal models and possibl(nasa.gov)raft. (nasa.gov) ### Why does NASA still care so much? Because NASA does not want to rely on one U.S. provider for astronaut transport. Commercial Crew was built around having both SpaceX and Boeing available for station rotations. SpaceX is carrying that load alone right now, but NASA still wants Starliner certified eventually for resilience, scheduling flexibility, and backup capacity. (nasa.gov) ### Bottom line Starliner is not dead. But it is no longer running on hopeful timelines. NASA’s latest schedule says the quiet part out loud — until Boeing proves the propulsion fixes work, Starliner stays on the ground. (nasa.gov)
