The First Test Flight of a Spacecraft that Flys with the Starliners: The First Flight After a Failure of NASA’s Space Mission Test Flight

NASA has given Boeing the “Authority To Proceed” for only three of its six potential operational Starliner missions. This milestone, known as ATP, is a decision point in contracting lingo where the customer—in this case, NASA—places a firm order for a deliverable. NASA has previously said it gives these tasks about 2 to 3 years before a mission’s launch.

The first test flight with astronauts for the Starliners was seven years behind schedule as the mission prepares to end this weekend. But due to technical problems with the spacecraft, it won’t come home with the two astronauts who flew it into orbit back in June, leaving some of the test flight’s objectives incomplete.

Ars Technica is a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews and more. Ars is a publication owned by Condé Nast.

For more than a decade, the space agency has worked with Boeing and SpaceX to develop two independent vehicles to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). In May 2020, Musk’s company launched it’s first Dragon with astronauts, and six months later NASA approved it to fly regular six-month space station crew rotation missions.

It is clear that this will be a blow for NASA and Boeing, which have to resolve two major problems in Starliner before it can fly with people again. NASA officials haven’t said whether they will require Boeing to launch another Starliner test flight before certifying the spacecraft for the first of up to six operational crew missions on Boeing’s contract.

The beleaguered Starliner spacecraft, built by Boeing, successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time, ending a crucial test flight that proved to be a real headache for NASA.

The astronauts closed the hatch of the Starliners on Thursday to get ready for departure on Friday. But it wasn’t what they envisioned when they left Earth on Starliner three months ago. Instead of closing the hatch in Starliner’s cockpit, they latched the front door to the space station’s side of the docking port.

That’s why, when the gumdrop-shaped space capsule parachuted down to Earth, it carried only cargo — and its first crew remained safely on board the International Space Station.

The failure of the thrusters onboard Starliner: the astronauts’ reaction on a mission delayed by a SpaceX capsule and for a return to the moon

Leaving them there “was a tough decision to make. It was really hard to determine whether to be uncrewed or not,” Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters earlier this week.

But there was enough uncertainty with regard to how the thrusters would perform that NASA officials preferred to err on the side of caution. The loss of space shuttles Columbia and Challenger is still haunting the space agency.

Starliner launched on June 5 with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, and Boeing and NASA initially said their test flight would last about eight days.

Instead, the mission stretched out for weeks as Boeing and NASA workers tried to understand why some thrusters had failed as Starliner approached the station.

The astronauts were put through training on the space station since they knew that they would be doing a test flight. They were well prepared to start working in this role.

The astronauts will be going home on a previously scheduled flight by Boeing’s competitor, SpaceX. NASA had to rejigger its plans to make sure two seats would be free in that SpaceX capsule.

What’s more, in case the space station suffers an emergency that forces an evacuation before that capsule arrives, the station’s crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that’s currently docked there.

NASA started to encourage industry to take over ferrying astronauts and cargo to the station so it could focus on returning to the moon.