Boeing’s big space test: Using Starliner to ferry NASA astronauts

Starliner, the name of Boeing’s gumdrop-shaped ship, is scheduled to blast off Monday at 10:34 p.m. ET, ferrying astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore to the International Space Station. The vehicle is slated to return them to Earth about a week after docking with the facility, landing in the western U.S. under parachutes.

Boeing has developed rockets, spacecraft and other vehicles for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for decades, including hardware for the Apollo moon missions. But the aerospace company has tripped up with Starliner, struggling at times with software, a communications system, valves, parachutes and even a type of tape used in the vehicle. The project has led to $1.4 billion in accounting losses for Boeing.

Monday’s planned mission comes as Boeing faces intense scrutiny over its bread-and-butter airplane business. Lawmakers and airline executives have blasted the company’s manufacturing failures after a segment on one of its planes blew out midair earlier this year, threatening passengers and crew on board. Air-safety regulators have ratcheted up oversight of the company’s operations.

“Spaceflight is risky. It is unforgiving of mistakes," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in an interview. “NASA is integrated with Boeing to make sure that this flight is as safe as possible."

Mark Nappi, a Boeing vice president, said the company’s spacecraft is ready to carry astronauts. Since taking over management of Starliner about two years ago, Nappi said he has focused his team on shifting from design and development to operations. Around 500 people are working on the program.

“We’ve been very disciplined, following the process. NASA is right there with us and that makes me feel comfortable," he said during an interview in March.

A successful mission and NASA’s subsequent certification of Starliner are the final milestones that Boeing needs to meet before the spacecraft makes regular crew rotations. Starliner’s problems have left the agency dependent on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for those flights from the U.S., prompting concern at the agency about relying too heavily on one supplier. SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Leaders at both Boeing and NASA have said they won’t hesitate to again postpone Starliner’s flight, should any safety risks emerge in the run-up to the launch.

Starliner will blast off from Florida, propelled by an Atlas V rocket, a proven booster that rocket operator United Launch Alliance has flown for years. After Starliner separates from the rocket, it will take about a day to reach the space station, where it is designed to autonomously dock with the lab.

The astronauts Starliner will carry—Williams, 58 years old, and Wilmore, 61—are retired Navy aviators who have been in orbit before. Each traveled to the space station on both NASA’s former space shuttle and Russian Soyuz vehicles.

Williams said the team working on Starliner, including herself and Wilmore, rigorously analyzed problems that emerged with the vehicle earlier, including the stuck valves and software challenges.

“We all pushed on it," she said in a recent interview. “We feel very confident that we’re at a point that we’re good with how the spacecraft is going to operate."

Boeing’s work on Starliner goes back more than a decade. NASA in 2014 awarded the company and SpaceX contracts to create new vehicles to fly crews to and from the space station, seeking two distinct spacecraft from U.S. aerospace companies. At the time, the agency depended on Russia for crew rotations, following the retirement of its shuttle fleet.

NASA rated Boeing as better prepared than the Musk-led company for technical maturity, management and other categories used to evaluate the bids. At SpaceX, which had been transporting cargo to the space station, some former employees said the company took it as a challenge to beat Boeing in astronaut missions.

In late 2019, Boeing launched the first Starliner mission, an uncrewed operation designed to test the vehicle under flight conditions without astronauts on board. The mission went poorly, dogged by software coding errors and the unexpected loss of a communications system. Starliner didn’t attempt one of its major goals for the mission—docking with the space station.

After the flight, NASA officials increased oversight of Boeing’s Starliner efforts, saying the agency had relied too much on the company’s internal engineering decisions. A review team analyzing the botched 2019 mission recommended Boeing make dozens of changes, including more testing of how hardware and software on the vehicle are integrated.

SpaceX in 2020 flew two astronauts to the station on its competing Crew Dragon vehicle, marking the first human space flight from the U.S. in nearly a decade.

In 2021, Boeing stacked Starliner on a rocket in what was meant to be a do-over of the earlier flight. But the company ran into trouble again, this time with stuck valves in a propulsion system. It later resolved the issue and completed the uncrewed operation, setting it up for a mission with astronauts last year.

The company and NASA delayed that mission, though, after identifying issues with the Starliner parachute system as well as potentially flammable tape Boeing used. Boeing’s Nappi said neither problem posed major risks but did narrow the margin for safe operations.

“Since it was the first flight, and we don’t have much history with the vehicle, it was Boeing’s decision not to accept that," he said.

The company completed another test of its parachute system in January and removed about a mile of the tape from Starliner.

SpaceX has demonstrated its ability to safely and reliably fly its fleet to the research lab, said Steve Stich, a program manager at NASA. The company has launched astronauts for the agency nine times over the past four years.

“But you’re just one flight away from some anomaly that you didn’t catch," showing why the agency wants to have two vehicles, he said. With Boeing’s Starliner, he said, “It’s worth taking the risk of that first test flight, which is always hard."

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com