Boeing's Starliner is going to fly again, but with nobody on board at first. NASA said at a news conference on Monday, 28 September, that an uncrewed Starliner-1 mission to the International Space Station could launch as soon as December or January. If that goes well, astronauts would climb back into Starliner on Starliner-2 by 2028.

NASA's put the full hour-long briefing, called Space Station Operations Update, on its YouTube channel. It's the clearest picture yet of how the agency wants to get a second American crew spacecraft back in service.

What the briefing covered

The panel was NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Low Earth Orbit Program manager Dana Weigel, astronaut Woody Hoburg and Boeing's John Mulholland. NASA's news release that day laid out the main points. The agency plans to take up options for a fifth and sixth Starliner flight to and from the station. And it'll work with Boeing and United Launch Alliance to certify ULA's Vulcan rocket to carry Starliner once the Atlas V flies for the last time.

Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

"We are starting with an uncrewed Starliner-1 mission to the International Space Station to validate the improvements made to the spacecraft and gather the flight data we need," Isaacman said in the release. "From there, we will use what we learn, continue implementing the corrective actions identified by our Program Investigation Team, and complete the testing and certification required for crewed flight. Our current plan is to return astronauts on Starliner-2 by 2028."

He also made it about having a choice. "NASA has been committed to having multiple crew transportation options since the beginning of the Commercial Crew Program," Isaacman said. "We have worked closely with Boeing to address the issues identified on previous Starliner flights, and we intend to see this vehicle return to flight in support of the International Space Station and future commercial destinations."

Space.com and CBS News both reported that Boeing representatives told reporters Starliner-2 would most likely launch in the middle of 2028.

How we got here

Starliner's only crewed flight so far, the Crew Flight Test, launched on 5 June 2024 with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. It was supposed to be a stay of about 10 days. On the way up, the spacecraft sprang several helium leaks, and five of the 28 reaction control thrusters on its service module failed. The crew still docked, partly by flying the ship by hand. But NASA decided not to bring them home in it. Starliner came back empty in September 2024, and Wilmore and Williams flew home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon on 18 March 2025. CBS News puts the whole trip at 286 days.

In February this year, NASA released what its Program Investigation Team found, along with 61 recommendations. Space.com reports NASA classed the test flight as a Type A mishap, its most serious category. The release says the service module thrusters had been running outside their engineering qualification. Testing showed the trouble came from a mix of the thermal environment and features built into the design.

What's been fixed

Weigel went through the fixes. Space.com reported that she traced the helium leaks to valve seals that broke down after exposure to nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidiser in Starliner's propulsion system. "That is why the material of the seal was changed," she said. "We also realized we needed to select seals that were on the larger side of the tolerance spectrum. Boeing has implemented all of those changes on the Starliner-1 spacecraft already."

She explained a separate thruster problem too, Space.com reported. "This is created by residual hydrazine propellant combined with atmospheric exposure," Weigel said, and she meant "specifically, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere". She went on: "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."

Boeing's also changed the service module's thermal design, and Starliner-1 will show whether that works. After the flight, NASA and Boeing plan to finish redesigning the service module's thruster valves. The release says the redesign goes after "poppet seal extrusion", which is when the Teflon poppets inside the valves deform and choke the flow of propellant. Boeing will also fit new crew module thrusters and batteries and make small changes to the parachutes. CBS News adds that valves are being replaced in all 12 crew module thrusters and a faster flight data recorder is going in.

"Starliner's next flight is a critical step on the path to achieving full system certification and ensuring a sustained human presence in low Earth orbit," Weigel said in the release. CBS News reported how she described the plan: "We'll do a series of on-orbit demonstrations and tests, stress the thrusters, and we'll take that set of data coming out of the mission combined with redesign, and that's what will inform the final crewed vehicle certification."

Space.com reported that Weigel put the cost of the spacecraft upgrades plus Vulcan certification at US$359 million.

Hoburg gets the seat

NASA also named the first crew member for Starliner-2. Woody Hoburg, who flew to the station on SpaceX's Crew-6 in 2023, will command it. Nobody else on the crew has been named yet.

"I've flown a lot of types of aircraft, and let me tell you, Starliner is a pilot's spacecraft," Hoburg said at the briefing, Space.com reported. "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."

Rockets, and why NASA wants two ships

Starliner has always launched on ULA's Atlas V, and that rocket's out of production. CBS News reports only about half a dozen are left in ULA's inventory. Space.com says Starliner-1 through Starliner-4 are planned on Atlas V, with Starliner-5 and Starliner-6 moving to Vulcan, which isn't certified to carry people yet.

CBS News reported that ULA said on X it is "already working towards the Starliner-1 mission" and looks forward "to integrate and certify our #VulcanRocket for human spaceflight," in its words.

Right now, SpaceX's Crew Dragon is the only working American crew ship. It launched NASA's Crew-13 to the station this week, and NASA has bought three more SpaceX rotations, covered in Three more crew flights through thirty. Weigel told reporters SpaceX's hardware won't last forever either. "As SpaceX has publicly stated, the Dragon and the Falcon won't be around forever," she said, CBS News reported. "Certifying Boeing's Starliner is important for both supporting ISS and also for follow-on future commercial destinations."

For background on how the commercial crew program got here, see NASA's Commercial Crew Bet Keeps Paying Off. NASA's own release is at nasa.gov.