Boeing, NASA, and U.S. Army personnel work around the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft after it landed on Dec. 22, 2019. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The NASA/Boeing joint team investigating the issues with Boeing’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test found that two errors could have led to a risk of losing the spacecraft had the NASA-Boeing team not corrected the issues so that the Starliner could return to Earth. The team convened in January after Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test on Dec. 20 missed its objective to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) because a necessary orbital burn did not happen after there was an anomaly with the mission elapsed timer. 

NASA said the team found the two critical software defects were not detected ahead of flight despite multiple safeguards, and ground intervention prevented loss of vehicle in both cases. Breakdowns in the design and code phase inserted the original defects, and breakdowns in the test and verification phase failed to identify the defects preflight despite their detectability. These errors could have led to risk of spacecraft loss had the NASA-Boeing team not been able to correct them.

NASA said there was no simple cause of the two software defects making it into flight, and there were numerous instances where the Boeing software quality processes either should have or could have uncovered the defects. These issue require systemic corrective actions and the team has outlined 11 corrective actions. The team is still performing additional analysis as to why the anomalies occurred. NASA also said that the intermittent communications issues still are under investigation. The Agency also said that it cannot definitively share the root causes and full set of corrective actions needed for the Starliner system, but expects to have those results at the end of February. 

“We want to make sure we have a comprehensive understanding of what happened so that we can fully explain the root causes and better assess future work that will be needed. Most critically, we want to assure that these necessary steps are completely understood prior to determining the plan for future flights,” NASA said in a release. 

In addition, NASA is also planning an Organizational Safety Assessment of Boeing’s work on the Commercial Crew Program, to examine “workplace culture.” This review would be added to the company’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract.