Will Starliner get more missions to ISS after 2024 mishap? NASA will answer at live event tomorrow

NASA has planned a news conference to announce an update on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on September 28. During the event which starts at 3 pm EDT at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, leadership from NASA and Boeing will discuss plans for regular crew missions to and from the International Space Station (ISS), something which Starliner has failed to achieve so far. 

The participants of the event include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Dana Weigel, manager of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg, and John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of the Boeing Commercial Crew. You can watch the event live on NASA’s YouTube channel and X handle at the aforementioned time. 

SpaceX making way for Boeing?

Starliner’s last mission was launched on June 5, 2024 and it turned out to be failure due to several issues with the spacecraft. It lifted off on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket with former NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore but it suffered helium leaks and thruster problems on its approach to the space station. The mission was planned to last 8-9 days but Starliner’s malfunctions forced the crew to stay aboard the ISS until March 2025, when they returned to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

The ailing Starliner had undocked months before their departure in September 2024 and landed in New Mexico without the astronauts because NASA was concerned about their safety. The complications prompted NASA to launch an investigation and the agency declared Starliner’s debut Crew Test Flight a ‘Type A’ failure. 

Earlier this month, a report said that NASA is likely to award two more missions to Starliner as SpaceX—the current primary launch provider—is mulling retiring the Dragon spacecraft. However, that won’t happen anytime soon as NASA has already awarded SpaceX nearly $950 million for three crew rotation missions to the ISS (Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17) that will launch by 2028. Both Boeing and SpaceX receive funding through the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract that gets modified as required. NASA first funded the two companies in 2014, disbursing $2.6 billion to SpaceX and $4.2 billion to Boeing for crew missions to the station. Since then, Boeing has launched Starliner on two uncrewed missions (which also suffered setbacks) in 2019 and 2022 and one crewed mission in 2024—the most consequential one to date.

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