NASA and Boeing announced a revised Starliner roadmap that keeps the troubled spacecraft in the Commercial Crew rotation despite a 2024 crew test flight that ended with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returning on a different vehicle. The plan: an uncrewed engineering flight (Starliner-1) targeting December 2026 or January 2027, followed by a crewed Starliner-2 mission by 2028. NASA is also exercising options for a fifth and sixth station flight, and will certify United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket to replace the retiring Atlas V. The 2024 Crew Flight Test exposed serious propulsion problems. NASA's Program Investigation Team identified 61 recommendations after finding that service module reaction control thrusters operated outside their engineering qualification envelope. The root cause was a combination of thermal environment issues and inherent design features that produced the loss-of-control events during flight. Boeing has since made thermal modifications to the service module and will implement a thruster valve redesign targeting poppet seal extrusion — the specific failure mechanism. Starliner-1 is explicitly framed as an engineering evaluation mission, not a demonstration of operational capability. Its purpose is to verify improved thermal environments, gather qualification data, and identify residual risk before anyone boards. Additional modifications — new crew module thrusters, batteries, and parachute system changes — will follow after the uncrewed flight, meaning the spacecraft that eventually carries crew will be materially different from the one that flies empty. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the decision around the Commercial Crew Program's original rationale: multiple crew transportation providers. "We intend to see this vehicle return to flight in support of the International Space Station and future commercial destinations," he said. The language matters — NASA is explicitly tying Starliner's future not just to ISS but to commercial stations that don't yet exist. The Vulcan certification adds a second layer of transition risk. Atlas V is retiring, and Starliner must qualify on a rocket it has never flown crew on. This means two concurrent qualification tracks — spacecraft and launch vehicle — both of which must close before astronauts ride again. ULA's Vulcan has flown, but human-rating is a different standard. The strategic logic is straightforward: NASA does not want to be a monopsony buyer dependent solely on SpaceX's Crew Dragon. That dependency became uncomfortable when Dragon was the only option to bring Wilmore and Williams home. But maintaining a second provider carries real costs — years of additional development, multiple uncrewed flights, and continued Boeing investment in a program that has already significantly overrun its fixed-price contract. The 2028 crewed target means Starliner will have spent roughly four years between its failed crew test and its next attempt to carry humans. For a vehicle originally contracted in 2014, this represents a decade-and-a-half development arc with one partial success (an uncrewed orbital flight test), one failure (the first crewed flight), and a recovery path that still requires clearing multiple qualification gates.
