Boeing’s Starliner capsule will remain ground-bound for a while longer yet.
Last June, Starliner launched on its first-ever crewed flight, which sent NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) for a roughly weeklong stay.
That timeline soon changed, however, because Starliner suffered a few issues on its way to the orbiting lab — namely, helium leaks in its propulsion system and the failure of five of its 28 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, which Starliner uses for fine adjustments such as the ones required during docking.
NASA extended Starliner’s ISS stay multiple times to study the problems before deciding to bring the spacecraft back to Earth uncrewed, which happened in early September. Wilmore and Williams, meanwhile, were retasked to become long-term ISS crewmembers, staying aloft until March 18, when they returned to Earth with SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts.
NASA and Boeing have made considerable progress in their analyses of data from Starliner’s first crewed flight. For example, the mission team managed to bring four of the five failed RCS thrusters back online while Starliner was in orbit. And they later tied the issue to overheating in the capsule’s engine pods, which likely restricted propellant flow.
However, technicians are still working on fixes for the thruster and helium-leak issues and will likely continue to do so for several more months, NASA officials said in an update on Thursday (March 27): https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2025/03/27/nasa-boeing-prepare-for-starliner-testing/
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“Once we get through these planned test campaigns, we will have a better idea of when we can go fly the next Boeing flight,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said in the Thursday statement.
“We’ll continue to work through certification toward the end of this year and then go figure out where Starliner fits best in the schedule for the International Space Station and its crew and cargo missions,” he added. “It is likely to be in the timeframe of late this calendar year or early next year for the next Starliner flight.”