NASA labels mission of Sunita Williams under ‘Type A mishap’

• NASA released a report examining the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crewed Flight Test with astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore on February 19.

• The Boeing Starliner Crewed Flight Test (CFT) represents a critical milestone in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program certification of Starliner as a US commercial spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

• Starliner launched June 5, 2024, on its first crewed test flight to the International Space Station. 

• Originally planned as an eight-to-14-day mission, the flight was extended to 93 days after propulsion system anomalies were identified while the spacecraft was in orbit.

• After reviewing flight data and conducting ground test at White Sands Test Facility, NASA decided to return the spacecraft without Williams and  Wilmore. 

• Starliner returned from the space station in September 2024, landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. 

• Williams and Wilmore later returned safely to Earth aboard the agency’s SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission in March 2025. 

• In February 2025, NASA chartered an independent Program Investigation Team to investigate the technical, organisational, and cultural contributors to the test flight issues.

• Investigators identified an interplay of combined hardware failures, qualification gaps, leadership missteps, and cultural breakdowns that created risk conditions inconsistent with NASA’s human spaceflight safety standards. 

• Due to the loss of the spacecraft’s maneuverability as the crew approached the space station and the associated financial damages incurred, NASA has classified the test flight as a ‘Type A mishap’.

• While there were no injuries and the mission regained control prior to docking, this highest-level classification designation recognises there was potential for a significant mishap. 

• The category is the space agency’s most severe, reserved for incidents causing more than $2 million in damage, the loss of a vehicle or its control, or deaths.

• It puts the Starliner incident at the same level assigned to the 2003 Columbia and 1986 Challenger space shuttle disasters.

Columbia STS-107 mission

The Columbia STS-107 mission lifted off on January 16, 2003, for a 17-day science mission featuring numerous microgravity experiments. Upon reentering the atmosphere on February 1, 2003, the Columbia orbiter suffered a catastrophic failure. The orbiter and its seven crew members, including Kalpana Chawla, were lost approximately 15 minutes before Columbia was scheduled to touch down at Kennedy Space Center.