For months, NASA and Boeing officials convinced the press that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams could depart from the ISS aboard the faulty Boeing spacecraft. However, given the seriousness of the situation, NASA should have declared the incident an accident in order to immediately investigate with the agency’s safety office, according to a new report from NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP).
“ASAP’s conclusion is that the lack of an in-flight declared accident or high-visibility close call led to a widespread, excessive … period of time where risk ownership and decision-making authority were unclear,” former space shuttle commander and ASAP member Charlie Precourt told Ars Technica.
safety first
Boeing’s Starliner capsule launched atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket on June 5 for its first crewed test flight. The spacecraft had difficulty docking with the space station after five of its thrusters failed during its approach. Starliner also developed five helium leaks, one of which was identified before its launch.
The mission was originally scheduled for eight days, but the crew’s return was delayed several times as space teams conducted tests and collected data on the vehicle before giving the astronauts the green light to return to Earth. Ultimately NASA deemed the spacecraft unfit to carry astronauts home and instead returned the crew to SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
Astronauts Wilmore and Williams spent nearly nine months on the ISS while officials downplayed the thruster malfunction and deliberated whether to return the astronauts to the Starliner. On September 6, 2024, Boeing’s Starliner blasted off from the ISS and returned to Earth without a crew.
NASA’s procedural requirements stipulate that the agency must declare an accident in the event of mission failure. The agency made this official announcement after Starliner’s first unmanned mission to the ISS in 2019, when the spacecraft failed to reach the space station. Announcing the accident starts an internal process within NASA’s safety office to launch an investigation and document lessons learned for future missions.
“Procedurally, investigation reports are attached to the anomaly declaration, so they receive official status in NASA’s records,” Precourt is quoted as saying. “Certainly, this particular anomaly deserves to be front and center for quite some time.”
wave of confusion
By failing to officially declare the Starliner mission an accident, NASA created a wave of confusion within the agency, delaying the launch of an investigation. For months, NASA was considering whether to return the crew aboard Starliner or opt to put them aboard a SpaceX capsule instead. The agency was eager to send the message to the press that the crew was not stranded in space and that Starliner was capable of returning the crew to Earth.
“Philosophically, there is an important difference, we will work toward proving that Starliner is safe for crew return, whereas the philosophy of Starliner is there is no path for return… until we figure out how to ensure that on-orbit failures do not happen again with Starliner,” Precourt told Ars Technica. “The latter would have been the more appropriate direction. However, there were many stakeholders who believed that the former approach was the direction. This ambiguity continued throughout the summer months.”
In its report, the safety panel recommended that NASA remove this ambiguity in the event of a future accident that could threaten the safety of its crew.
Despite the Starliner accident, NASA is still not giving up on Boeing’s spacecraft. In late November, the space agency announced it was revising its commercial crew contract with Boeing and reducing the number of Starliner missions to four instead of six. Starliner’s next mission to the ISS is not scheduled until April 2026, although the spacecraft will fly without a crew this time.
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