The next Boeing Starliner flight will only be allowed to carry cargo

American space The agency has ended months of speculation about the next flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, confirming that the vehicle will carry only cargo to the International Space Station.

According to the space agency, NASA and Boeing are now aiming for an unmanned Starliner-1 flight no earlier than April 2026. NASA added in a statement that the launch will require the completion of detailed testing, certification and mission readiness activities by next April.

“NASA and Boeing continue to rigorously test Starliner’s propulsion system in preparation for two possible flights next year,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in a statement.

Reduction of crew missions

NASA also said it had reached an agreement with Boeing to modify a commercial crew contract signed in 2014 that called for six crewed flights to the space station after the spacecraft was approved. The plan now is to fly Starliner-1 with cargo and then up to three additional missions before retiring the space station.

“This modification allows NASA and Boeing to focus on safely validating the system in 2026, executing the first Starliner crew rotation when ready, and aligning our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on the station’s operational needs through 2030,” Stich said.

SpaceX and Boeing both signed contracts in 2014 to develop crewed spacecraft and fly six operational missions to the space station. SpaceX conducted a successful crewed test flight of its Crew Dragon vehicle in mid-2020 and flew its first operational mission before the end of the year. Most recently, the Crew-11 mission began in August, and Crew-12 is currently scheduled for February 15.

Dragon has served as a reliable transportation system for NASA as Boeing has faced development problems.

Starliner’s first flight in December 2019, without a crew, was aborted due to software problems with the vehicle. It almost disappeared shortly after launch and also before re-entry into the atmosphere. It did not make a scheduled rendezvous with the space station.

The second mission, Orbital Test Flight 2, was carried out in May 2022. Due to problems in the previous mission, this spacecraft also flew without a crew. This flight was more successful and reached the space station despite some thruster problems.

Orbital flight test 3?

NASA then spent more than two years testing the Starliner on Earth before its first crewed flight in 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams. The Starliner spacecraft once again encountered serious thruster problems during its approach to the space station. (However, the life-or-death nature of the flight was not revealed until nearly a year later.) The Starliner eventually docked with the station, but after intense scrutiny, NASA informed Boeing that the vehicle would return to Earth without a crew.

As a result, the Dragon mission was launched later in 2024 carrying only two astronauts instead of four. This allowed Wilmore and Williams to return safely in March 2025.

Since then, it has appeared that Boeing may have to fly an uncrewed mission to demonstrate the safety of the Starliner’s propulsion system, but that was not confirmed until Monday.

NASA is largely disappointed with the changes made to Boeing’s propulsion system and the tests it has conducted on Earth. Part of the difficulty in diagnosing thruster problems is that problems occurred in the “service module” portion of the spacecraft, which is launched before the vehicle re-enters the atmosphere and returns to Earth.

This story appeared first Ars Technica.