Boeing Starliner to fly uncrewed in December, crew in 2028
NASA and Boeing announced an uncrewed Starliner test flight to the International Space Station, with astronaut Woody Hoburg to command the next crewed mission.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule will not carry astronauts before 2028, and until then it has to reach the International Space Station without a crew, no earlier than December this year. NASA and Boeing laid out the schedule on Monday, September 28, at a press conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The speakers were NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Low Earth Orbit Program Manager Dana Weigel, astronaut Woody Hoburg and John Mulholland, Boeing vice president and manager of the commercial crew program. It is the first detailed plan for Starliner’s return to flight since NASA classified the 2024 crewed test flight as a Type A mishap, its most severe category.
What exactly is planned
Starliner-1 will be an uncrewed, cargo-only flight, no earlier than December 2026. The next flight, Starliner-2, is the first that will carry people again, and it is planned for 2028. Mulholland added that Boeing is aiming for mid-year. Weigel said she wants it to be a routine crew rotation rather than a test flight, meaning four astronauts, who could include representatives of other countries. Hoburg, who previously flew as pilot of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission, is the commander.
A successful uncrewed flight does not automatically clear the way for people. NASA needs a year or more to assess its results. Isaacman described how the work is divided:
“Corrective actions have been assigned across the recommendations with the work divided between what is required for an uncrewed Starliner 1 mission and what must be completed before it carries our astronauts once again.”
Mulholland said the program is in good position: “We are in great shape for Starliner 1 and the certification ahead of the Starliner 2 mission in 2028.” According to him, NASA has so far approved about 90 percent of the certification requirements for crewed Starliner flights.
Why a gap of a year or more
The main reason is the thrusters’ valves on the service module. During the 2024 flight, five of the 28 thrusters of the control system failed on the one-day trip to the station, during approach and docking. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams therefore returned only after more than nine months, aboard a Crew Dragon capsule, while Starliner landed empty.
Weigel says Boeing is addressing the thermal part of the problem with shielding, but the mechanical part cannot be fixed on the existing design:
“On the mechanical side, we’re not able to address that with the current design. That’s what’s driving the need to do a modification to the poppet. That will take some time, but those design modifications will be implemented on the crewed vehicle before we fly crew.”
Work on the new design of the valve parts is only beginning. The uncrewed flight is meant to show how the mitigated thermal behavior holds up in flight, and only then comes the final decision. In addition, Boeing is replacing the valves on all 12 thrusters of the crew module on both spacecraft, installing new batteries, redesigned parachute joints, a higher-rate data recorder and a new seal material in the helium system. Of the 21 anomalies from the 2024 flight, 19 have been closed, and the remaining two are expected in October.
The organization as a problem
Hoburg said it is not only the hardware that worries him:
“So what keeps me up at night? It’s not the hardware, it’s the underlying pattern.”
He pointed to the finding of NASA’s investigation team about insufficient systems engineering and explained that components of the helium system and thrusters were damaged on the ground before launch. “We’ve been relatively hardware poor and test poor, and we needed to be test rich”, he said. He also said the program is being put back on the path to crewed flight: “We’re putting the program on a path to correct the key technical deficiencies and return to crewed flight as soon as we’re ready.” He expects anomalies on Starliner-1, but hopes they will be less serious.
Money, rockets and SpaceX
The contract was cut from six flights to four in November 2025. Weigel has now said the process of restoring those two flights is starting, but she is not approving them yet: “We are restoring our ability to order flights five and six. I’m not authorizing them at this time.” A contract modification worth $359 million has also been agreed, covering part of the cost of returning to flight. The program’s cost reached $2 billion by February 2025, and Boeing mostly bears the overruns because the contract is fixed-price.
Six remaining Atlas V rockets, which are no longer being produced, are planned for the flights. NASA will work with Boeing and United Launch Alliance on certifying the Vulcan rocket for missions after that.
Isaacman tied the plan to the future of a competitor: “I do not think it’s a secret that SpaceX intends to sunset older platforms like Falcon and Dragon as they concentrate on their next generation capability, Starship.” By his estimate, demand is about one crewed mission to low Earth orbit every six months, and Starliner-2 would be the first of at most five such flights under the current plan. NASA plans to bring the station down from orbit in 2030.
The limit of the plan is clear: an uncrewed flight can verify only the thermal measures. The mechanical valve change is still being designed and, according to Weigel, will be installed on the crewed spacecraft.
