The concept behind human spaceflight is that the problems are identified early, confined in a short time and converted into lessons before turning into disasters. The post-mission assessment of Boeing by NASA on the Starliner Crew Flight Test demonstrates the situation arising when complications multiply quicker than an organisation can keep up.
In a new internal evaluation, NASA categorized the problematic Starliner mission in 2024 as a “Type A” mishap, the most serious one in the list of NASA. The term is applied to cases where serious damage, loss of vehicle or control or loss of life is involved even though the worst events are prevented. This topmost label in the words of NASA indicated that the uncertainty was not up to the performance and safety requirement of transporting the crew back home on board Starliner.
The technological aspect of the mission was two old astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were put into orbit in what was supposed to be a brief final certification-style test flight. Rather, the technical failures made the flight a months-long mission of an International Space Station followed by a journey back to Earth on another vessel. NASA has a new administrator Jared Isaacman who claimed that leadership decisions within NASA and Boeing contributed to the factors of failure: We are rectifying those errors. We are now officially reporting a Type A incident and holding the heads responsible to make sure that such an incident does not happen again.
The manner in which the problems of propulsion kept on happening in rapid sequence was what made the approach of Starliner to the station so fraught. Flight controllers and crew members reported that there were several, successive failures in the thrusters when the vehicle was trying to dock, and that this put the vessel at the limits of its capabilities to manoeuvre with full control. As control of more thrusters became unresponsive, mission control chose to regain control by issuing ground commands of resets, a move that virtually resulted in the trade of flight discipline against the probability of stabilising the spacecraft and able to dock it.
In addition to the problem of the thruster, the engineers monitored the leakages of helium in the propulsion system, which was another issue that had a direct bearing towards the consistency of the performance of the thrusters. Ground and orbital tests indicated a minor yet potentially serious failure: it was found that a tiny Teflon seal might creep or expand under heat to block the flow of propellant to thrusters. NASA managers also admitted uncertainties, and mentioned that it was difficult to demonstrate that an error in a test was exactly the one that occurred in space.
Those instant technical results were a superimposition to a more prolonged trend. Weaknesses in systems engineering, integration and end-to-end verification had been previously noted earlier by reviews of Starliner. In 2020, NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel conducted an assessment that stated that the initial uncrewed orbital test of Starliner would have led to the loss of the vehicle “due to certain foundational [Systems Engineering and Integration] errors”, and that lack of a single facility capable of complete and combined avionics and software testing. The issue became a reality in the 2024 crewed flight when the spacecraft was being ferried people into space and any misinterpretation of risk could not be delayed.
NASA eventually decided to land Starliner without its crews on board and leave Williams and Wilmore on the station as the spacecraft autonomously returns to the station to continue analysis and collect more data. The agency termed the decision as the unwillingness to take “more risk than is needed” and yet derive engineering value out of the flight.
Another way that Isaacman framed the episode was as an institutional test. He said that Boeing was constructing Starliner, and Nasa accepted this and took two astronauts to space. We should be open about our failures as well as our achievements so as to be able to do those missions which transform the world. It is necessary to accept our mistakes and never repeat them.
