Boeing disclosed in its quarterly SEC filing on July 28 that the next Starliner mission will not fly until at least the final three months of 2026, marking another delay for a program that has not completed a crewed flight since June 2024.
The disclosure came in Boeing’s Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2026, in which the company stated it had expected to launch an uncrewed mission followed by a crewed mission during 2026 but now expects to complete an uncrewed mission no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2026. The filing added that Boeing and NASA are currently in discussions regarding timing and requirements for follow-on missions, and the outcome of those discussions is uncertain.
Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, addressed the Starliner schedule during the company’s Q2 earnings call on the same day. He described the redesign of the technical deficiencies identified during the 2024 Crew Flight Test as progressing well, but said the flight timeline now depends on how NASA restructures its launch sequence. He noted that this would have some impact on when the launch actually occurs, and that the company needs to work with NASA to align on both crewed and uncrewed launches going forward. He told analysts he did not anticipate an additional cost charge before return to flight, but acknowledged unresolved uncertainty with the space agency.
The Crew Flight Test in June 2024 experienced multiple reaction control system thruster failures and helium leaks while approaching the International Space Station. NASA deemed Starliner unsafe for crew return, and the spacecraft undocked and landed uncrewed in September 2024. The astronauts it had carried, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, returned to Earth nine months later aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, which met on June 22, reported that work to close the remaining technical issues is still in progress. The panel stated that Starliner-1, the next mission now planned as an uncrewed cargo flight, could take up to a year from that date to launch. Of 28 in-flight anomalies catalogued from the Crew Flight Test, 22 have been closed but six remain open, chiefly centered on the thruster heating problems in the service module’s “doghouse” enclosures.
The Starliner program has accumulated approximately USD 2 billion in charges against Boeing’s earnings to date. The SEC filing did not increase that provision, but Orbital Intel noted that the Q4 2026 target leaves almost no schedule margin against the ASAP panel’s “up to a year” estimate from late June.
NASA’s ISS operations manager Bill Spetch said in May that Starliner-1 had not yet been added to the agency’s published crew and cargo manifest. He described the schedule as heavily loaded but stated the agency was working to maintain windows where the mission could fly.
Separately, Boeing’s 10-Q confirmed for the first time that the company and Lockheed Martin each guaranteed USD 500 million of United Launch Alliance credit facilities maturing July 30, 2027. The filing cited the grounding of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket as negatively affecting ULA’s financial condition and noted that both parent companies expect to provide additional financial support and could incur losses if ULA is unable to resume Vulcan launches consistent with ULA’s assumptions.
SpaceX remains NASA’s only operational crew transportation provider to the ISS, a position it has held by default for more than two years since the Starliner CFT anomalies. NASA filed a procurement notice in May 2026 to add six Dragon missions to its existing contract, citing Boeing’s technical issues and schedule uncertainty.
Images: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/starliner-pad.jpg
Sources: Boeing SEC Form 10-Q (Jul 28, 2026), Boeing Q2 2026 earnings call (Ortberg, Jul 28, 2026), NASA ASAP meeting (Jun 22, 2026), NASA ISS operations (Spetch, May 2026), Orbital Intel (Jul 28, 2026)