NASA Still Pursuing Boeing Starliner Certification

NASA says it wants to stick with the Boeing CST-100 Starliner to give the space agency options in case the SpaceX Dragon system encounters problems.

NASA last year had to lean on the SpaceX system when it experienced technical issues with Starliner during a Crew Flight Test (CFT) that turned a days-long mission into a months-long saga. The propulsion issues drove NASA to return the Boeing capsule to Earth uncrewed and make astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams part of the International Space Station (ISS) crew. They returned to Earth March 18 along with NASA's Crew-9 Dragon commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

"This is a lesson learned," says Joel Montalbano, NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate deputy associate administrator. "When we have Boeing and SpaceX flying on a regular basis, we need to be able to do the opposite, too. If we come up on a SpaceX vehicle and have a problem, it would be bringing people home on a Boeing vehicle."

Both NASA and Boeing are pressing ahead with efforts to certify the Starliner capsule to join SpaceX's reusable Crew Dragon capsule for regularly scheduled crew launches to the ISS, agency officials noted following the safe Crew-9 splashdown.

NASA and Boeing are pursuing agency Commercial Crew Program certification by addressing the post-launch overheating of the Starliner's reaction control system thrusters, which followed several helium leaks in the hardware that pressurizes the propellant flow to those thrusters, as well as the larger orbital maneuvering system and attitude control thrusters. The leaks were traced to seals that had degraded due to exposure to corrosive propellants.

"When we look forward, what we would like to do is one flight and then get into a crew rotation flight," Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, responded when questioned about Starliner plans during a post-splashdown briefing hosted by NASA's Johnson Space Center. "So the next flight up would really test all the changes we are making to the vehicle, and then the next flight beyond that. We really need to get Boeing into the crew rotation. So that is kind of the strategy."

When asked whether the next Starliner launch would have crew on board, his response was uncertain.

"When we look back at the [CFT], we got a lot of good data out of that flight, with having a crew on board," Stich said. "Really the next thing we need to go test is the propulsion system and the service module. We need to make sure we can eliminate the helium leaks, eliminate the service module issues we had on docking. The rest of the vehicle performed really well."

However, he noted Starliner could be test-flown again without crew.

Stich praised Boeing as "being very committed" to Starliner and intent on having a role in a growing low-Earth-orbit economy.

"They realized they have an important vehicle and that we are very close to having these capabilities that we would like to field," he said. "I think we have some changes we need to make to the way we heat those thrusters, the way we fire those thrusters and then we can test those on the next flight."

NASA is looking to retire the ISS in 2030 and transitioning its growing scientific research and technology development activities to multiple commercially owned and operated space stations.

Montalbano noted that since November 2000 the ISS has been continuously staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts, launched initially aboard now-retired NASA space shuttles and currently aboard Russian Soyuz capsules that were joined by the SpaceX Dragon in 2020.

"It just shows the flexibility we have with the space station and our commercial partners," Montalbano said. "We have a luxury we didn't have in the past."