Keith’s note: The NASA OIG has issued a report on Management of Commercial Crew – and they are concerned with a lot of things. Summary below.
While SpaceX ultimately worked through a variety of its own technical challenges and is currently providing continuous crew transportation to the ISS, Boeing’s and NASA’s development efforts to certify the Starliner continue to face challenges that have delayed progress and increased both costs and risks to sustained crew transportation to the ISS through 2030. Since 2020, Boeing’s flight tests have uncovered numerous unexpected issues resulting in an additional 6 years of delays. These challenges culminated during the first crewed flight test of the Starliner, CFT, in June 2024. Many of these issues are related to three long-standing technical challenges that have prevented Boeing from obtaining the human-rating certification—helium leaks, propulsion systems failures, and parachute anomalies. The helium leaks and propulsion systems failures remain unresolved as of March 2026, and NASA is uncertain as to when this testing will be completed or human-rating certification for the Starliner will be obtained.
We found that three primary factors drove Starliner’s ongoing technical challenges and associated schedule delays. First, NASA was overconfident in Boeing’s design and potential success based on the provider’s use of heritage systems and its long-standing space flight experience. Second, this overconfidence led to Boeing establishing and NASA accepting unrealistic launch and flight test schedules. Third, the pressure to adhere to this aggressive schedule was compounded by NASA’s underutilization of the contract’s data rights, limiting the Agency’s ability to fully analyze and resolve flight simulation training failures to ensure crew safety. Going forward, NASA’s ongoing workforce constraints may further hinder oversight, resolution of technical issues, and flight certification schedules.
The Agency currently lacks sufficient contracted flights to continue to fully crew the ISS through 2030, so additional flights will need to be purchased from either Boeing or SpaceX. As NASA and Boeing work to address these challenges and advance toward certifying Starliner in a safe manner, NASA announced the next flight—Starliner-1—will fly without crew. As a result of choosing to use this post-certification mission to fly cargo to the ISS, rather than transporting crew, NASA will incur additional costs. Further, NASA has already incurred $17 million in additional costs to accelerate SpaceX flights originally planned for the Starliner. NASA also authorized flights to proceed earlier than the contracts specified, which increased overall program costs and added financial risk to Boeing’s contract. Therefore, we question $127.9 million in payments to Boeing, in addition to the $43 million we questioned in a prior 2019 CCP-related report, for a mission that is far from certain.
Lastly, we found NASA has significant requirements in place that inform its human space flight efforts, including classification of anomalies or accidents as either mishaps or close calls. Specifically, NASA requires a mishap classification if the main mission objectives are not achieved, with the most severe designation a Type A mishap, such as the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle disasters. Even though the CFT mission failed to return to Earth with crew— a key mission objective—NASA did not classify the CFT mission failures as a Type A mishap until February 2026— 21 months after the mishap occurred. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel criticized the Agency’s mishap reporting requirements, noting they create ambiguity, specifically for exemption of events from mishap classification if they occur during testing. The requirement, as written, resulted in ambiguity for NASA decision-makers when addressing the CFT failures, leading to delays, increased costs, and potential performance and safety issues on future flights.
