Nasa ranks 2024 spacecraft mishap among its worst disasters
US space agency delivers a harsh assessment of a botched Boeing Starliner test flight that stranded two astronauts
Nasa on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space.
The US space agency labelled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a “Type A” mishap - the same classification of the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters - a category that reflects the “potential for a significant mishap,” it said.
The failures left a pair of Nasa astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months in a mission that captured global attention and became a political flashpoint.
“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It’s decision-making and leadership,” Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman said in a briefing.
03:02
Nasa astronauts finally back on Earth after 9-month delay
“If left unchecked,” he said, this mismanagement “could create a culture incompatible with human space flight”.