NASA & Boeing Starliner Development Update — Transcript, Boeing Summary & Media Q&A

01:34George Alderman, NASA — moderator

Good afternoon, and welcome to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I'm George Alderman, NASA deputy press secretary. Today, NASA and Boeing will provide an update on the continued development of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and discuss the path ahead as we work toward regular crewed missions to and from the International Space Station. Joining us today are NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.

Dana Weigel, manager of NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program. NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg and John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for Boeing's Commercial crew program. We'll begin with opening remarks from each of our participants, and then we'll take questions from the media here in the room. And joining us by phone for media, joining us on the phone, please press star one to enter the

02:18Jared Isaacman, NASA Administrator

Thanks, George. So good afternoon everyone. We are certainly living in some of the most exciting times. I believe in space exploration since the Apollo era.

And as this domain continues to open up, there is going to be tremendous demand for launch vehicles, for transfer stages, for landers and of course, spacecraft that can take crew to and from low earth orbit. Now, around 15 years ago, after the space shuttle retired, the United States certainly went through somewhat dark period where we depended on Russia for astronaut access to space. Now, the Commercial Crew program restored that capability to American soil and was designed from the beginning to give NASA multiple options for human spaceflight. Now, SpaceX Dragon capsule has been a great success.

Perhaps the clearest proof of what the Commercial Crew program was designed to achieve, providing a reliable American transportation transportation system that is supported government and commercial missions to low earth orbit. Now, Starliner has always been meant to be part of that story. So of course, the program did encounter notable delays and significant technical issues, including the uncrewed demonstrations and the high profile mishap during the crew flight test mission. And as I said earlier this year, we have taken responsibility for NASA's contributions to the program challenges, including our handling of the mishap investigative process at NASA.

We took ownership of the matter and delivered extreme transparency and corrective actions, as outlined in the Pit report, and Boeing responded, as we would have expected from a long standing agency partner, mistakes and missteps in the business of sending astronauts to and from one of the most demanding and dangerous environments are always possibilities, despite how hard we work to minimize them alongside our partners, we endeavor to engineer safe vehicles, test and qualify hardware, train our operators and astronauts, mitigate the risk to the greatest extent possible. And then we fly. When we get something wrong, we have to investigate how it occurred and be open and transparent about the findings so we can learn from them, so we can fix the problems and again, move forward.

With respect to Starliner program, the teams have made substantial progress in that regard. Corrective actions have been assigned across the Pit recommendations, with the work divided between what is required for an uncrewed Starliner one mission and what must be completed before it carries our astronauts once again on Starliner two. Now, teams have identified the cause behind the service module helium leak experienced during Starliner's test flight, and replace the affected seals with a new material and tighter tolerances in that area. They traced the crew module thruster anomaly to internal valve corrosion and put new controls in place to flush and purge those thrusters between mission operations.

Boeing also made significant thermal modifications to the service module to reduce thruster temperatures. One of the major contributors to the performance issues we saw in flight. Those are meaningful and necessary improvements. But before crewed operations resume the service module thrusters poppet requires a design modification.

New crew module thrusters will be installed, along with a few other spacecraft upgrades to batteries and the parachute system. NASA is targeting no earlier than December 2026 for an uncrewed Starliner one mission to the International Space Station to validate the recent remediation efforts. From there, we will gather data, continue implementing the remaining changes recommended in the Pit report, and plan for a crewed Starliner two mission in 2028. Today, it's my privilege to announce that NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg will command Starliner to.

Now, Woody served as a pilot of NASA's SpaceX crew six mission, spent over 185 days aboard the International Space Station, completed two spacewalks. He's an absolutely brilliant guy who's helping on a lot of our ignition priorities, and I am confident his experience will serve this mission incredibly well. Starliner two would begin a series of as many as five crewed Starliner missions under the current plan. Now, we also recognize the component service life limitations of the current Atlas V launch vehicles that have already been produced.

And of course, the rocket is no longer in production. Therefore, NASA will begin working with Boeing and United Launch Alliance towards certifying the Vulcan Centaur rocket for Starliner, providing sustained transportation solution to the International Space Station and then subsequent commercial destinations that may follow. Now, of course, I'm sure many are interested in the future of Dragon alongside this announcement. 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, which just had a significant milestone today as it reached orbit and is paramount to America's ability to return to the moon. Our ambitions on the lunar surface itself, including a moon base and can also serve other potential missions from carrying grand new telescopes for science and discovery to national security applications to the orbital economy. I think it's safe to say that both Falcon and Dragon exceeded all their initial design expectations, and this transition provides industry with really a fantastic opportunity. So given our extensive history with Starliner and the taxpayer investment already made, we believe it represents the fastest path to preserving reliable crewed access to low earth orbit.

But from the beginning, commercial crew was built around competition, and NASA continues to see real value in having two crew transportation providers. Our forecasted demand is approximately one crewed mission to low earth orbit every six months, and competition can help drive down costs, strengthen resilience, and support the broader commercial ecosystem. So while we acknowledge that cost volatility that may come from major suppliers entering and then exiting the market, NASA would like nothing more than to see additional crewed and cargo providers. A thriving commercial Leo destination and overall orbital economy.

At the same time, we remain extremely focused on implementing President Trump's national space policy, returning NASA astronauts to the moon, building the moon base, getting America underway on nuclear power in space, launching more missions of science and discovery, rebuilding our X-Plane portfolio, and developing the technology required to take humanity farther than ever before. And Starliner has an important role to play in that future, supporting access for NASA alongside our international and commercial partners, the International Space Station, and again, the commercial ecosystem that may come next. I have every confidence that teams working the Starliner effort will adhere to the agency's high standards.

NASA engineers are working hand in hand with our partners, supporting testing at White Sands, working the hardware, interrogating the data, and taking ownership of the outcomes. We expect them to deliver. That is why I want the Starliner story to become, and frankly, the story of every program underway at NASA, talented teams embedded with our commercial partners across Artemis, across Moon Base, and all of our world changing missions, solving the hardest problems and putting wins on the board and delivering the inspiring headlines the world has been patiently waiting for. And now with that, I will hand

09:36Dana Weigel, NASA Low Earth Orbit Program manager

Thank you. Thank you all for being here with us this afternoon. And I do want to thank the administrator for his leadership as we chart Starliner's path forward. We've partnered very closely with Boeing to outline Starliner's return to flight plan, and we're happy to share those details with you today.

As the administrator mentioned, it's always been the commercial crew program's goal to have two crew transportation providers to ensure commercial access to low-Earth orbit. As you're all aware, and as SpaceX has publicly stated, the Dragon and the Falcon won't be around forever. Certifying Boeing's Starliner is important for both supporting ES and also for follow on future commercial destinations. We've taken deliberate action since the CFT mission to correct issues to better understand system performance and to implement upgrades.

The Boeing and NASA teams have partnered together to both test and analyze all of the propulsion system anomalies, and we now understand the causes going into a little bit more detail on the helium system leakage. We now understand that the material that was selected had performance degradation and issues. After long term exposure to the NTO the oxidizer. That is why the material, the seal was changed.

We also realized we needed to select seals that were on the larger side of the tolerance spectrum spectrum. Boeing has implemented all of those changes on the Starliner one spacecraft already, and we've got additional seals in long duration exposure testing looking forward towards the crewed missions. We determined that the crew module thruster anomaly is the result of corrosion. This is created by residual hydrazine propellant combined with atmospheric exposure, specifically the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And so Boeing has put in place procedures to flush out the hydrazine and also to flow a continuous purge to isolate those thrusters from the environment. Now we'll have to replace all of the thrusters on the crewed vehicle. So we start with new thrusters. And then we'll have all of these additional mitigations in place to keep them from corroding through extensive service module thruster testing.

We now understand that the thrusters valve poppet extrudes under certain thermal and mechanical conditions. On the thermal side, Boeing has implemented thermal shunts and barriers to the spacecraft. We expect that to substantially reduce the temperature that the thruster will see. It will be really important to us during Starliner one to see how those performance enhancements yield in a thermal environment.

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.

We are also partnering with Boeing to make additional spacecraft improvements to increase reliability and our overall safety margin on the vehicle. Boeing will integrate new batteries that we're going to build. They'll make targeted improvements to the parachutes by strengthening some of the seams, and they will add a data recorder to the vehicle. Our goal is to fly Starliner one as soon as the vehicle and the team is ready.

We really need to see how those thermal modifications perform on the spacecraft, and we intend to put the propulsion system through its paces. We'll do a series of on orbit demonstrations and tests, stress the thrusters, and will take that set of data coming out of the mission. Combined with the redesign. And that's what will inform the final crewed vehicle certification.

We will fly the Starliner one mission with stricter performance parameters in place when we're flying closer to space station. Long term, we are committed to Starliner certification and ensuring commercial crew access to low earth orbit. With the six Atlas rockets remaining, we do intend to use all of those, but the Atlas's do have limited life components in them, so there's still some risk there as they get older and older. Part of the contract scope.

As you had heard the administrator mentioned, is certification, human rating of the Vulcan rocket. To address that risk, but also to put us in a good position for the future transportation capabilities we need in low earth orbit. We are restoring our ability to order flights five and six. I'm not authorizing them at this time.

That's something we would do when we get closer to the flight, need date and when we're further along in certification of the crewed Starliner. I do want to thank the commercial crew space station engineering, safety operations and Boeing teams for their dedication and incredible commitment over the past two years. Getting us to this point. I'm deeply grateful for their technical expertise and their resiliency.

And with that, I

14:51Woody Hoburg, NASA astronaut and Starliner 2 commander

Thanks, Dana. And thank you all for being here today. It's an honor to be with you. I want to start by recognizing Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, CFT, as you know, was a remarkably challenging mission, and Butch and Sonny conducted themselves with the utmost of professionalism, competence, and humility throughout the mission.

They are American heroes, and I am deeply humbled to follow in their footsteps. I also want to thank the administrator and our leadership team for earlier this year, declaring CFT a type A mishap. That declaration went a long way toward restoring trust and building the culture of accountability that human spaceflight requires. I have enormous confidence in the decisions we're announcing today.

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. I want to talk briefly about the vehicle Starliner. I'm in training on Starliner, and there's a lot that's right with this vehicle. I've flown a lot of types of aircraft.

And let me tell you, Starliner is a pilot's spacecraft. Starliner gives the crew real capabilities to respond to off nominal events. These were exercised during CFT and along with our expert flight control team, the manual control capabilities on Starliner were critical to achieving a safe docking. Despite numerous thruster failures.

In fact, the deepest layer of Starliner's capability in this area. Backup control was not exercised on CFT. We originally planned to test that on the way downhill, and I'm looking forward to completing that objective on the next crewed flight. We have a lot of work ahead.

I've personally been tied in with the technical teams for quite some time, and I specifically want to commend the Boeing and NASA team that executed the thruster tests out at White Sands in 2025. These tests were well executed and gave us a far better understanding of the physics governing poppet extrusion and RCS injector performance. Specifically, as Dana mentioned, we had an understanding from the beginning that there's a significant temperature component to this phenomenon. But we now, sitting here today, understand that it's more than just temperature.

And with this new understanding, leadership is acting swiftly to recommend the SM RCS poppet redesign that we're announcing here today. As Dana mentioned, we already have a number of thermal modifications in place on Starliner one, and I am expecting a thorough test campaign to qualify the Poppet specific redesign after Starliner one. Bottom line we're on the right path to fixing the SM six issues for crewed flight. I want to zoom out briefly and recognize the Independent Program Investigation team.

I've read their report, of course, and take their findings very seriously. We all take their findings very seriously. On each of the three big CFT anomalies. So the SM C s thruster fails, fail offs, the helium leaks and the failed CM crew module thruster.

I am confident in our evolving understanding of the proximate cause and in the redesign, development and testing pathway that we are on today. I expect that all three of these technical issues will be resolved for crewed flight. So what keeps me up at night? It's not the hardware, it's the underlying pattern, the pit, the program investigation team.

They zoomed out and looked at root causes. So the organizational causes and they identified three. And I want to highlight one of those today. It was inadequate systems engineering and integration creating gaps in hardware qualification.

In the case of the helium leaks and the crew module RCS failures, the unqualified environment was actually on the ground, not in space. And we now know that the hardware damage occurred before liftoff. It is, I believe, critical that we deeply understand not just the hardware issues themselves, but the conditions that allowed major gaps in critical systems to go unnoticed so that they cannot surprise us again. So this reaches beyond propulsion.

And as recommended by the program investigation team, we must provide evidence to demonstrate that all star, all Starliner subsystems have been reevaluated for qualification due to the misses in operational environments. That work is underway today, and I expect it will continue beyond Starliner one. And leading up to crewed flight, it's ultimately about validation. Does the integrated system actually work in its real environment?

Unfortunately, every flight to date has had major unexpected anomalies in critical systems. As we know, Ahmet said it perfectly back in February. The test and qual approach has to match how you build the vehicle, and unfortunately, we've been relatively hardware poor and test poor, and we needed to be test rich. So achieving operational reliability at the integrated system level is the hard work that we have ahead.

So that brings me to Starliner one. Starliner one is going to be a key step forward in that development effort to get back to crewed flight. Flight is, of course, the ultimate validation test. Starliner one is going to accomplish some key objectives.

It'll be the first flight with those thermal shunts. We hope to see good performance out of those and more broadly, validate the thermal environment and inform the ongoing valve redesign effort. We're also going to validate GNC changes. Starliner one will be the first flight of what we call Omach off pulsing, which is a somewhat significant change, and I'll be looking forward.

I'll personally be watching that closely because we do expect to fly that on the future missions as well. We will see anomalies. Every single human spaceflight mission and even cargo mission experiences anomalies. What I'm looking for is flattening in the learning curve, hopefully moving from major anomalies to more minor ones.

And I'm expecting that every flight in space will make us better. And Starliner one will be no exception. I'm deeply honored to be part of this team. We do have a lot of work ahead, but I believe we're moving in the right direction, and I am deeply committed to returning Starliner to crewed flight.

21:15John Mulholland, Boeing — opening remarks summarized

John Mulholland, Boeing — remarks paraphrased[John Mulholland, Boeing — opening remarks summarized] Mulholland said Boeing and NASA were working toward an uncrewed Starliner 1 mission in the December 2026–January 2027 window while closing remaining reviews and corrective actions. He described propulsion changes, replacement of crew-module thruster valves, battery upgrades, Vulcan human-rating work and a longer-term goal of making Starliner available for crewed NASA missions and future low-Earth-orbit destinations. He said NASA had approved roughly 90% of Starliner human-spaceflight certification requirements.

27:02Media Q&A — editorial digest

[Will Robinson-Smith, Spaceflight Now, asks about international crew assignments and seat swaps.] Woody Hoburg said Starliner is intended to be a crew-rotation vehicle and should carry international partners. Dana Weigel said most crew assignments will be made later, although pilot training needs more lead time.

[Irene Klotz, Aviation Week, asks whether Starliner 2 would be a crew-rotation mission or another test, and asks Boeing about recurring thruster issues.] Weigel said her goal is a crew-rotation mission, subject to Starliner 1 data and full crew certification. Mulholland said Boeing had focused on root cause, thermal and operational mitigations, and replacement of affected crew-module valves after identifying a corrosion mechanism involving residual hydrazine and carbon dioxide.

[Eric Berger, Ars Technica, asks about future seat pricing and additional NASA funding.] Mulholland said detailed future pricing depends on certification of both Starliner and Vulcan. Weigel said spacecraft upgrades, thruster work and Vulcan certification total about $359 million, separate from missions five and six, whose pricing did not change.

[Marcia Dunn, Associated Press, asks why NASA should stay with Starliner despite public-perception problems.] Jared Isaacman said NASA had chosen to see the Boeing contract through and would have walked away earlier if that were its intention. He pointed to the planned uncrewed demonstration and NASA's continuing interest in multiple low-Earth-orbit transportation providers.

[Joey Roulette, Reuters, asks how Starliner fits with Crew Dragon as SpaceX eventually retires Dragon and Falcon 9.] Weigel said SpaceX controls its future fleet decisions, while NASA's Commercial Crew goal remains two operational providers. She would like Starliner to reach a higher recurring cadence later in the station program.

[Bill Harwood, CBS News, asks how many Dragon and Starliner flights NASA currently has available.] Weigel said NASA recently purchased three additional Dragon missions, providing capability through Crew-17, and the Boeing contract includes Starliner 1 plus five crewed-mission opportunities. The later Boeing options have not all been authorized for execution.

[Asher Brinkman, Launch Heaven Media, asks what remains to integrate Starliner with Vulcan.] Mulholland said the planned configuration uses Vulcan with two solid boosters and the 85K upper stage. Work includes a new launch-vehicle adapter, aerodynamic and wind-tunnel work, coupled-loads analysis and human-rating/certification.

[Jackie Wattles, CNN, asks how soon Starliner 2 could fly after a successful Starliner 1 and why NASA bought three extra Dragon flights.] Weigel said NASA did not plan around a ten-flight bulk purchase. Mulholland said the schedule with margin points to a mid-2028 Starliner 2 capability, while Boeing will try to be ready sooner.

[Jeff Foust, SpaceNews, asks how NASA would preserve competition after Dragon and Falcon 9 retire.] Isaacman said NASA is focused first on completing the current contracts. He described a continuing demand signal for crew transportation to low-Earth orbit and said NASA would support credible additional crew-vehicle providers.

[Mike Wall, Space.com, asks why the gap between Starliner 1 and Starliner 2 could exceed a year.] Weigel said the work includes maturing redesigned thruster hardware, delta certification, retesting and retrofitting the crewed vehicle. NASA wants enough design maturity and certification evidence before flying people.

[An in-room reporter asks whether Boeing is positioning Starliner for commercial stations after the ISS.] Mulholland said Boeing has discussed future transportation needs with commercial-station providers and sees Vulcan integration as part of making Starliner usable beyond the currently contracted NASA missions.

[Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel, asks Woody Hoburg about astronaut confidence after CFT.] Hoburg said the program has learned from service-module RCS thruster behavior, helium leaks and crew-module thruster failures, and he is increasingly confident the teams understand the proximate causes and are on a path to remediation.

[Will Gisborne, Bloomberg, asks what NASA means when later Boeing missions are available but not yet authorized.] Weigel explained that a contract option can exist before NASA authorizes Boeing to begin spending and execution. NASA stages authorizations to preserve flexibility and account for parts lead times.

[Ken Kramer, Space UpClose, asks why the future thruster redesign is not already complete and what Starliner 1 must prove.] Mulholland said the current spacecraft already incorporates thermal and operational mitigations while a poppet redesign is being developed for the crewed configuration. He described hot-fire and six-degree-of-freedom testing before docking and further testing after undocking. Weigel said the redesign is proceeding in parallel, with Starliner 1 data feeding the final design and certification.

[Ryan Caton, NASASpaceflight, asks whether NASA plans another Commercial Crew-style competition for a third provider.] Isaacman said NASA does not currently plan a new Commercial Crew program while two providers remain under contract, but it regularly supports companies maturing new spacecraft and could provide expertise to a credible additional crew-vehicle effort.

[Final in-room question asks whether Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams or Mike Fincke could serve in an astronaut-emeritus mentoring role.] Hoburg said he spoke with Wilmore and Williams after their return and tried to absorb as much of their experience as possible. He would welcome experienced veterans continuing to advise future crews.

59:33Closing

George Alderman thanked the participants and media and directed viewers to NASA's ISS information pages.