What was meant to be a triumphant crewed test flight for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft nearly became a catastrophe. And new revelations from NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams show the mission, which launched in June 2024, faced far more serious issues than the agency initially let on.
The Starliner mission to the International Space Station suffered multiple technical failures, including malfunctioning thrusters and leaks, just to name a few of the problems. All of this nearly prevented the spacecraft from docking with the International Space Station. While the public heard about some of these hiccups, a recent interview between the astronauts and Ars Technica paints a far more alarming picture—one where returning to Earth wasn’t always guaranteed.
“I don’t know that we can come back to Earth at that point,” Wilmore admitted to Ars, recalling a moment mid-mission when the crew realized they were down to a single layer of fault tolerance. “I don’t know if we can. And matter of fact, I’m thinking we probably can’t.”
With four out of 28 critical reaction control thrusters offline, one more failure would have left them unable to control the spacecraft’s movement at all—a dangerous bid for a spacecraft approaching a space station with other occupants aboard it.
However, according to Wilmore, NASA overrode Starliner’s flight rules and didn’t tell the astronauts about this right away. The agency had, supposedly, begun waiving established safety protocols to continue with docking procedures, even as the crew manually controlled a sluggish and unresponsive spacecraft in orbit.
These Starliner problems weren’t just isolated to docking, either. The mission was originally planned for a week but stretched into nine months as further issues delayed the capsule’s return trip. The astronauts eventually came back aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, while the Starliner was sent home empty in September—a decision that reportedly sparked outrage from Boeing execs when NASA first made it.
Boeing’s Starliner program was already years behind schedule when it launched in 2024. Not to mention it was billions over budget. In light of these new discoveries, though, it now faces increased scrutiny. NASA and Boeing say they’re working through the spacecraft’s in-flight anomalies and hope to attempt another crewed mission no earlier than late 2025. But after this flight’s close call, confidence in the Boeing-built spacecraft is shakier than ever.
Back before its launch, I wrote that it might be time for NASA to bail on Starliner for good due to its problems, and that opinion still stands. It’s one thing for a test flight to encounter problems—that’s the nature of testing.
But when safety protocols are quietly dropped mid-mission, and the astronauts themselves question whether they’ll make it back, it’s just not a good look for the agency, and the public deserves far more transparency if we’re going to support missions like this going forward.
Sure, the astronauts may take some of the blame for Starliner’s problems. Ultimately, it was the big wigs at NASA that decided to put Starliner in the air despite all the warning signs.
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