NASA and Boeing have outlined a new return-to-flight plan for Starliner, with an uncrewed Starliner-1 mission targeted for as early as December 2026 or January 2027 and a crewed Starliner-2 flight planned for 2028. The update keeps the Boeing spacecraft in NASA’s Commercial Crew programme and centres on Kennedy Space Center as work continues to resolve the thruster and helium-leak issues exposed during the capsule’s troubled 2024 test flight.
The first flight will be used as an engineering and evaluation mission to validate spacecraft fixes and gather performance data before astronauts return to the vehicle. Additional redesign work remains under way, and the crewed mission will proceed only after the uncrewed flight, testing and certification steps are complete. NASA and Boeing also tied the broader recovery plan to certification work for the Vulcan rocket, which forms part of the route back to regular Starliner operations.