NASA designates the botched Boeing Starliner test flight as a ‘Type A mishap’, according to a new report.
By Muhammad MubashirPublished On 20 Feb 2026
The botched test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — a protracted saga that kept two astronauts in space months longer than expected — was a debacle in league with US space shuttle disasters that cost crew members their lives, according to newly revealed findings from a NASA investigation about the ordeal.
While the crewed Starliner mission did not end in tragedy, the myriad issues discovered with the Boeing-built spacecraft “revealed critical vulnerabilities in the Starliner’s propulsion system, NASA’s oversight model, and the broader culture of commercial human spaceflight,” according to a report the agency published Thursday.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman discussed the incident in scathing terms at a news conference Thursday, noting that the Starliner should not have flown with crew on board when it did.
“It’s decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight,” Isaacman said.
Officially, the Starliner test flight is now considered a “Type A” mishap — a designation that NASA defines as an incident that results in more than $2 million of damage, the loss of control or destruction of a vehicle, or a loss of life. The Columbia and Challenger Space Shuttle disasters were also classified as “Type A” incidents.
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Isaacman said the report and Thursday news conference were geared toward “doing the right thing” and properly investigating the Starliner mission. Initially, NASA had permitted its Commercial Crew Program, which oversees Boeing’s Starliner development, to self-investigate, agency officials said.
Isaacman said that decision was “inconsistent with NASA safety culture.”
“I think setting the record straight, classifying this as a Type A mishap, ensures what happened here with this mission is appropriately recorded and can be referenced for future learning,” Isaacman said. “We’re trying to send a message about what is the right and wrong way to handle situations like this so that they do not reoccur.”
Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, is interviewed outside the White House in Washington, DC, in December 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Isaacman, who took NASA’s top job after his Senate confirmation in December, did not say whether any NASA managers would lose their positions over the incident.
Boeing designed and built Starliner, though NASA holds a roughly $4 billion contract with the company to use the spacecraft for ferrying space agency astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Starliner has been under development for more than a decade, and problems with the vehicle’s thrusters also cropped up during uncrewed test flights flown prior to NASA’s inaugural Boeing Crew Flight Test in 2024, which included NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams, who served as crew members of the Boeing Starliner test flight, inspect safety hardware aboard the International Space Station.
NASA
Isaacman said that it’s now clear that the root causes of Starliner’s issues were never found — and still have not been determined.
Previous investigations into Starliner’s issues “often stopped short of the proximate or the direct cause, treated it with a fix, or accepted the issue as an unexplained anomaly,” Isaacman said.
‘Unprofessional conduct’
Starliner ran into problems shortly after embarking on its first crewed mission in June 2024. The astronauts helming the test flight, Wilmore and Williams, expected to fly the spacecraft to the International Space Station and dock for about a week before returning home.
Those plans were quickly dashed, however, when the Starliner spacecraft endured helium leaks and thruster outages en route to the orbiting laboratory. Ultimately, NASA determined the spacecraft was not safe enough to return Williams and Wilmore home, and they became part of the next space station crew rotation, eventually returning home on a SpaceX capsule. The astronauts ultimately spent more than nine months in orbit.
Isaacman also lambasted the decision-making process surrounding the astronauts’ return, saying on Thursday that “disagreements over crew return options deteriorated into unprofessional conduct while the crew remained on orbit.”
One unnamed NASA worker who was interviewed in the report said, “There was yelling in meetings. It was emotionally charged and unproductive.”
Boeing's uncrewed Starliner spacecraft backs away from the International Space Station in September 2024 moments after undocking from the Harmony module to return to Earth.
NASA
Another stated: “There are some people that just don’t like each other very much, and that really manifested itself during CFT,” the person said, using the abbreviated name for the crewed Starliner test flight.
While long-duration stays on the space station are common, Williams and Wilmore’s saga highlighted concerning flaws with the Starliner capsule — which by 2024 was already years behind schedule.
