NASA report recalls dysfunction, heated emotions during Boeing’s botched Starliner flight

NASA's report reveals dysfunction and turmoil in Boeing's Starliner mission, highlighting communication failures and leadership issues that endangered astronauts.

NASA on Thursday (February 19, 2026) released a sweeping report on Boeing’s botched Starliner mission that left two astronauts stuck on the International Space ​Station for nearly a year, detailing communication breakdowns and “unprofessional behavior” as the agency and its longtime contractor struggled to agree on ‌how to safely return the crew to Earth.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman ripped into Boeing and ​agency leadership for their handling of the Starliner mission during a short-notice news conference that coincided ⁠with the release of a 300-page report detailing technical and oversight failures behind the spacecraft’s first crewed mission, which concluded last year.

“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not ‌hardware,” Isaacman wrote in a letter to NASA employees, which he posted in full on X.

“It is decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible ‌with human spaceflight,” he added, echoing findings in the report’s “cultural and organizational” section.

Starliner’s technical failures kept NASA ‌astronauts Butch ⁠Wilmore and Suni Williams on the ISS for nine months in a high-stakes test mission ⁠initially planned to last roughly a week.

On Earth, according to the report, Boeing and NASA officials sparred in tense meetings on how best to bring the crew home, with “unprofessional behavior” and yelling matches that countered the agency’s norms of healthy technical debate and crisis management.