NASA and Boeing laid out a revised path forward today for the troubled CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, adding two more Starliner-crewed missions to the International Space Station and committing to certify United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to carry astronauts.

“NASA is targeting no earlier than December 2026 for an uncrewed Starliner-1 mission to the International Space Station to validate the recent remediation efforts [following the Starliner CFT mishap],” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said. “From there, we will gather data, continue implementing the remaining changes recommended in the PIT (Program Investigative Team) report, and plan for a crewed Starliner-2 mission in 2028.”

“The next step is an uncrewed Starliner-1 flight to the station that could launch in December or January 2027. If that engineering test goes well, NASA plans to fly astronauts on Starliner-2 by 2028. NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg has been assigned to command that first crewed return flight,” Isaacman continued.

The Administrator was not done. There are six Atlas V rockets left after the program was discontinued in 2021. “Now, we also recognize the component service life limitations of the current Atlas V launch vehicles that have already been produced. And of course, the rocket is no longer in production. Therefore, NASA will begin working with Boeing and United Launch Alliance towards certifying the Vulcan Centaur rocket for Starliner, providing sustained transportation solution to the International Space Station and then subsequent commercial destinations that may follow.”

That surely had to be welcome news for ULA and for Vulcan, which has its own troubles and is currently grounded while engineers from ULA, Northrop Grumman, NASA and others work through problems with NG’s GRM-63XL solid rocket boosters. Vulcan is expected to return to flight late in 2026 or early 2027.

Cost For The Upgrades?

Dana Weigel, the Manager of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, fleshed out the price for additional Starliner qualification, “Value for the upgrades to both the spacecraft upgrades, including the thrusters and everything you’ve heard summarized today, plus the Vulcan certification that is 359 million. So. That’s for that part. Separately, there’s missions five and six. Those actually stayed at the exact same pricing. So there was no change to those.”

Starliner-2 Commander Woody Hoburg

Minutes after he was announced as the next Starliner commander, NASA Astronaut Woody Hoburg commented, “I’m [already] in training on Starliner, and there’s a lot that’s right with this vehicle.” He continued, saying, “I’ve flown many types of aircraft. And let me tell you, Starliner is a pilot’s spacecraft. Starliner gives the crew real capabilities to respond to off-nominal events. These were exercised during CFT and along with our expert flight control team, the manual control capabilities on Starliner were critical to achieving a safe docking, despite numerous thruster failures,” he said.

Boeing Comments

Boeing’s Vice President and Program Manager of Commercial Crew was present at the update, and in his comments, saying, “Over the last two years, we’ve completed a tremendous amount of work with the safety first mindset to identify and correct the issues encountered during the crewed flight test. We’ve done this in partnership with NASA, and together, we’ve implemented corrective actions for the technical and cultural issues identified in NASA’s PIT report. That report, when it was published in February, validated much of the technical work in progress.”

Mullholland continued, saying, “I appreciate NASA’s leadership partnership and our strong working relationship to accomplish all the progress in these last two years, particularly addressing the propulsion issues. We brought the best of Boeing and NASA together. The team thoroughly analyzed the anomalies, developed design and operational solutions, and demonstrated those through an expanded test campaign. We also identified remaining sensitivities and designed mitigations that will increase our robustness and ensure long-term supportability for NASA’s commercial crew efforts.”

The Starliner From CFT Onwards

We’ve been covering Starliner for a long time.

Author: Charles Boyer

NASA kid from Cocoa Beach, FL, born of Project Apollo parents and family. I’m a writer and photographer sharing the story of spaceflight from the Eastern Range here in Florida.