by CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead conduct a test flight carrying cargo to prove their safety.
Monday’s announcement comes eight months after the first and only Starliner crew returned to Earth following an extended mission aboard SpaceX. Although NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams managed to dock Starliner with the International Space Station in 2024, the capsule had so many problems that NASA ordered it returned empty, leaving the astronauts stuck there for more than nine months.
Since then, engineers have been working on the engine and other problems that plagued the Starliner capsule. The next cargo flight to the space station will not take place until April at the earliest, pending further testing and certification.
Boeing said in a statement that it remains committed to the Starliner program and makes safety a top priority.
NASA is also reducing the planned number of Starliner flights from six to four. If the cargo mission goes well, the remaining three Starliner flights will be left for crew swaps before the space station decommissions in 2030.
“NASA and Boeing continue to intensively test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two possible flights next year,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in a statement.
NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 — three years after the last space shuttle flight — to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost. The Boeing contract was worth $4.2 billion and SpaceX’s was worth $2.6 billion.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its first astronaut mission for NASA in 2020. The twelfth crew launch for NASA took place this summer.
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