NASA's new chief rebukes Boeing, space agency over problem-plagued Starliner mission

Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams were expecting to spend eight to 10 days in space. They ended up​ remaining in orbit for 286 days. Space NASA's new chief rebukes Boeing, space agency over problem-plagued Starliner mission that left astronauts stuck in space for months By William Harwood William Harwood CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. Read Full Bio William Harwood February 19, 2026 / 6:17 PM EST / CBS News Add CBS News on Google An independent review of the first — and so far, only — piloted flight of Boeing's troubled Starliner spacecraft concluded that the test represented a potentially life-threatening "Type A" mishap resulting from multiple technical problems and management miscues, NASA officials said Thursday. The findings prompted NASA's new chief to make openly critical comments about his own agency and Boeing. "This was a really challenging event and...we almost did have a really terrible day," said Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator. "We failed them." Boeing's Starliner capsule, seen docked at the International Space Station while approaching the Nile Delta. NASA He was referring to now-retired astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who were launched in June 2024 expecting to spend eight to 10 days in space. They ended up remaining in orbit for 286 days, hitching a ride home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in March 2025 after NASA ruled out landing aboard the Starliner.NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took the reigns of the agency in December, said NASA will continue working with Boeing to make the Starliner a viable crew transport vehicle, adding that "sustained crew and cargo access to low Earth orbit will remain essential, and America benefits from competition and redundancy.""But to be clear, NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected, the propulsion system is fully qualified and appropriate investigation recommendations are implemented," he said.He made the comments as the agency was releasing the results of a months-long independent investigation of the Starliner mission. The panel's report cited a long list of management failures and technical issues that were not fully understood at the time, but were still considered acceptable for flight.The panel concluded the problems experienced during the mission were representative of a "Type A mishap," meaning an unexpected event that could have resulted in death or permanent disability, damage to government property exceeding $2 million and the loss of a spacecraft or launch vehicle. Isaacman said the eventual cost of the Starliner's woes exceeded the $2 million threshold "a hundred fold.""Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected," he said. "But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human space flight." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (foreground) and Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya discuss an independent investigation into ill-understood technical problems, poor communications and other management shortcoming that put two astronauts in danger during a piloted test flight of Boeing's Starliner crew ferry ship. NASA Isaacman said the investigation revealed pressure within NASA to ensure the success of the agency's Commercial Crew Program, which is based on having two independent astronaut ferry ships. That advocacy "exceeded reasonable bounds and placed the mission the crew and America's space program at risk.""This created a culture of mistrust that can never happen again and there will be leadership accountability," Isaacman said. The report quoted unnamed personnel saying things like, "There was yelling in meetings. It was emotionally charged and unproductive." Another said, "If you weren't aligned with the desired outcome, your input was filtered out or dismissed." Yet another told the panel, "I stopped speaking up because I knew I would be dismissed."Equally troubling, according to one NASA worker quoted in the report, "NASA wasn't blaming Boeing, but everybody else was. [...] You know, it's our program. We're responsible too. Nobody said that. And nobody within NASA [or outside of NASA] has been held accountable. Nobody. We're 11 months after it happened, and there's been no accountability at all, from any organization."Isaacman promised that "lessons will be appropriately learned across the agency and there will be accountability."In the wake of the space shuttle's retirement in 2011, NASA awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to build independent ferry ships to carry astronauts to and from the space station. SpaceX, awarded an initial $2.6 billion contract, has now launched 13 piloted Crew Dragon flights for NASA and seven purely commercial missions. Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita