WASHINGTON, D.C.: NASA administrator Jared Isaacman castigated Boeing and the space agency on February 19 for Starliner's botched flight that forced two astronauts to prolong their stay at the International Space Station.

Isaacman blamed poor leadership and decision-making at Boeing for Starliner's troubles. He also said NASA managers failed to step in and get Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams back more quickly.

The two test pilots, both of whom retired from NASA soon after returning, spent more than nine months at the station before SpaceX brought them back in March 2025.

Starliner's problems must be fixed before it flies any more astronauts into space, he said.

In a strong and clear decision, Isaacman raised the seriousness of Starliner's troubled first astronaut mission. He called it a "Type A mishap," meaning it was serious enough to put a crew's lives at risk. The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters also involved problems with leadership and workplace culture.

Isaacman said it was a mistake that Starliner was not labeled as a serious mishap from the beginning. He said there was internal pressure to keep Boeing involved and to stay on schedule.

"This is just about doing the right thing," he said. "This is about getting the record straight."

In 2024, thruster failures and other issues almost stopped astronauts Wilmore and Williams from reaching the space station after launch. Boeing is still studying the thruster problems.

"We almost did have a really terrible day," said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, referring to the possible loss of life.

NASA released its 312-page Starliner report while it was also carrying out a second fueling test of its moon rocket at Kennedy Space Center. The first test earlier this month failed because of hydrogen fuel leaks. This delayed the astronauts' first planned flight to the moon since 1972.

Boeing said the report will help the company improve crew safety and move forward. It also said the Starliner program will continue. However, time is limited because NASA plans to retire the space station in 2030. Isaacman, who has paid for his own space travel, believes there will be "endless demand" for different ways to reach orbit once private space stations become active.

There is no set date for when Boeing can launch Starliner again on a supply mission. That flight would act as another test to prove it is safe before carrying astronauts. For now, SpaceX is the only U.S. company flying astronauts to space.

"Boeing has made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team," Boeing said in a statement.

Even before the troubled astronaut mission, Boeing had problems with Starliner. In 2019, the first test flight without astronauts ended up in the wrong orbit. It had to be repeated, and the second mission encountered issues as well.

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX in 2014, after the space shuttles were retired, to transport astronauts to and from the space station. The contracts are worth billions of dollars. Since 2020, SpaceX has sent 13 crews to the International Space Station for NASA.

Kshatriya said NASA must improve in the future.

"We have to own our part of this," he said. Speaking about Wilmore and Williams, he added, "We failed them."