2026年2月19日 / 美国东部时间下午6:17 / CBS新闻
美国宇航局官员周四表示，对波音公司麻烦不断的”星际liner”航天器首次（也是迄今为止唯一一次）载人飞行进行的独立审查得出结论：这次测试代表了一起可能危及生命的”A级”事故，原因是多个技术问题和管理失误。调查结果促使美国宇航局新任局长公开批评他自己的机构和波音公司。
“这是一个非常具有挑战性的事件，…我们差点就经历了非常可怕的一天，”美国宇航局副局长阿米特·卡什特里亚（Amit Kshatriya）表示。”我们让他们失望了。”
他指的是现已退休的宇航员巴里”布奇”·威尔莫尔（Barry “Butch” Wilmore）和苏妮塔·威廉姆斯（Sunita Williams），他们于2024年6月发射升空，原计划在太空停留8至10天。最终，他们在轨道上停留了286天，2025年3月乘坐SpaceX的”龙”载人飞船返回地球，因为美国宇航局排除了使用”星际liner”返回的可能性。
2025年12月上任的美国宇航局局长贾里德·艾萨克曼（Jared Isaacman）表示，美国宇航局将继续与波音合作，使”星际liner”成为可行的载人运输工具，并补充说”持续的载人及货运能力对近地轨道至关重要，而美国将从竞争和冗余中受益”。
“但需要明确的是，在理解并纠正技术原因、推进系统完全通过认证并实施适当的调查建议之前，美国宇航局不会再让宇航员乘坐’星际liner’执行任务，”他说。
他发表上述评论之际，该局公布了对”星际liner”任务长达数月的独立调查结果。调查小组的报告列举了一系列当时未被充分理解但仍被认为可用于飞行的管理失误和技术问题。
调查小组得出结论：此次任务中出现的问题代表了一起”A级事故”，即一起可能导致死亡或永久性残疾、政府财产损失超过200万美元以及航天器或运载火箭损失的意外事件。
艾萨克曼表示，”星际liner”问题的最终成本超过了200万美元这个门槛”百倍”。
“星际liner存在必须纠正的设计和工程缺陷，”他说。”但这次调查揭示的最令人不安的失败不是硬件问题。而是决策和领导力，如果不加以制止，可能会形成一种与人类太空飞行不相容的文化。”
艾萨克曼说，调查显示，美国宇航局内部存在确保其商业载人计划（该计划基于拥有两艘独立的载人飞船）成功的压力。这种倡导”超出了合理范围，使任务、机组人员和美国的太空计划处于危险之中”。
“这造成了一种不信任的文化，这种文化绝不能再发生，并且将有领导力问责，”艾萨克曼说。
报告引用了未具名人员的说法，如”会议上有人大喊大叫。气氛紧张且毫无成效”。
另一位人士说：”如果你不与期望的结果保持一致，你的意见就会被过滤掉或被驳回。”
还有一位人士告诉调查小组：”我不再发言，因为我知道我会被驳回。”
报告中引用的一位美国宇航局工作人员同样感到不安：”美国宇航局没有指责波音，但其他人都在指责。…你知道，这是我们的项目。我们也有责任。没有人这么说。而且美国宇航局内部或外部都没有人被追究责任。没有人。事件发生11个月后，根本没有任何组织追究责任。”
艾萨克曼承诺”将在整个机构内适当吸取教训，并且将有问责机制”。
2011年航天飞机退役后，美国宇航局在2014年向波音和SpaceX授予了数十亿美元的合同，建造独立的载人飞船，以运送宇航员往返空间站。SpaceX获得了初始26亿美元的合同，现已为美国宇航局执行了13次载人”龙”飞船飞行任务和7次纯商业任务。
相比之下，波音获得了初始42亿美元的合同，但在2019年一次无人”星际liner”测试飞行中遇到了多个问题，最终需要第二次无人测试飞行，才于2024年6月5日最终发射威尔莫尔和威廉姆斯进行该船唯一的载人测试飞行。
搭乘联合发射联盟Atlas 5火箭进入太空的旅程顺利，机组人员第二天成功与国际空间站对接。但飞船在此过程中经历了多次氦推进系统泄漏，数台机动喷气式发动机未产生预期推力。
“在交会和近距离操作期间，推进系统异常导致多个推进器故障，并暂时失去了六自由度控制，”艾萨克曼周四表示。”控制人员和机组人员表现出非凡的专业素养…并成功实现了对接。
“有必要重申一个显而易见的事实，”他说。”在那一刻，如果做出不同的决定，如果推进器未能恢复或对接失败，这次任务的结果可能会大不相同。”
威廉姆斯和威尔莫尔淡化了飞行中的故障，原计划飞行约8天。但美国宇航局和波音最终延长了他们在轨道上的停留时间，进行了数周的测试和分析，以确定”星际liner”是否可以安全地将其机组人员带回地球。
到2024年8月，波音管理人员确信工程师已理解问题，机组人员可以安全地乘坐”星际liner”返回地球。但美国宇航局管理人员排除了这一选择。相反，他们决定让宇航员留在空间站，直到2025年初，他们才能搭乘SpaceX的”龙”载人飞船返回地球。
为了实现这一点，SpaceX的一艘”龙”飞船于2024年9月发射，船上只有两名宇航员，而非原计划的四名。这在SpaceX机组人员完成六个月的太空停留后，为威尔莫尔和威廉姆斯腾出了两个座位。
与此同时，”星际liner”在2024年9月成功进行了无人返回地球飞行，尽管调查结果显示，额外的推进系统问题使飞船在发生另一次故障时没有备用选项。
调查小组总结道：”尽管这次任务最终成功地保障了机组人员安全，但它揭示了’星际liner’推进系统、美国宇航局监督模式以及更广泛的商业载人航天文化中的关键漏洞。”
该小组提出了61项正式建议，”涵盖技术、组织和文化领域，以在下次载人’星际liner’任务前解决这些问题”。
“报告强调，技术卓越、透明沟通以及明确的角色和责任不仅是最佳实践，更是未来任何商业载人航天任务成功的关键，”调查小组表示。”CFT（首次载人测试任务）的教训必须制度化，以确保在追求进度或成本时不会妥协安全。”
波音在一份声明中表示，公司已在纠正措施方面取得”实质性进展”，并推动团队内部发生重大文化变革，这些变革直接与报告中的调查结果相呼应。
“美国宇航局的报告将加强我们为支持任务和机组人员安全所做的持续努力——这始终是我们的最高优先事项。我们正在与美国宇航局密切合作，确保未来’星际liner’任务的准备就绪，并继续致力于美国宇航局对两个商业载人提供商的愿景。”
NASA’s new chief rebukes Boeing, space agency over problem-plagued Starliner mission that left astronauts stuck in space for months
February 19, 2026 / 6:17 PM EST / CBS News
An independent review of the first — and so far, only — piloted flight of Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft concluded that the test represented a potentially life-threatening “Type A” mishap resulting from multiple technical problems and management miscues, NASA officials said Thursday. The findings prompted NASA’s new chief to make openly critical comments about his own agency and Boeing.
“This was a really challenging event and…we almost did have a really terrible day,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator. “We failed them.”
Boeing’s Starliner capsule, seen docked at the International Space Station while approaching the Nile Delta. NASA
He was referring to now-retired astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who were launched in June 2024 expecting to spend eight to 10 days in space. They ended up remaining in orbit for 286 days, hitching a ride home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in March 2025 after NASA ruled out landing aboard the Starliner.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took the reigns of the agency in December, said NASA will continue working with Boeing to make the Starliner a viable crew transport vehicle, adding that “sustained crew and cargo access to low Earth orbit will remain essential, and America benefits from competition and redundancy.”
“But to be clear, NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected, the propulsion system is fully qualified and appropriate investigation recommendations are implemented,” he said.
He made the comments as the agency was releasing the results of a months-long independent investigation of the Starliner mission. The panel’s report cited a long list of management failures and technical issues that were not fully understood at the time, but were still considered acceptable for flight.
The panel concluded the problems experienced during the mission were representative of a “Type A mishap,” meaning an unexpected event that could have resulted in death or permanent disability, damage to government property exceeding $2 million and the loss of a spacecraft or launch vehicle.
Isaacman said the eventual cost of the Starliner’s woes exceeded the $2 million threshold “a hundred fold.”
“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected,” he said. “But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It’s decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human space flight.”
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (foreground) and Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya discuss an independent investigation into ill-understood technical problems, poor communications and other management shortcoming that put two astronauts in danger during a piloted test flight of Boeing’s Starliner crew ferry ship. NASA
Isaacman said the investigation revealed pressure within NASA to ensure the success of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which is based on having two independent astronaut ferry ships. That advocacy “exceeded reasonable bounds and placed the mission the crew and America’s space program at risk.”
“This created a culture of mistrust that can never happen again and there will be leadership accountability,” Isaacman said.
The report quoted unnamed personnel saying things like, “There was yelling in meetings. It was emotionally charged and unproductive.”
Another said, “If you weren’t aligned with the desired outcome, your input was filtered out or dismissed.”
Yet another told the panel, “I stopped speaking up because I knew I would be dismissed.”
Equally troubling, according to one NASA worker quoted in the report, “NASA wasn’t blaming Boeing, but everybody else was. […] You know, it’s our program. We’re responsible too. Nobody said that. And nobody within NASA [or outside of NASA] has been held accountable. Nobody. We’re 11 months after it happened, and there’s been no accountability at all, from any organization.”
Isaacman promised that “lessons will be appropriately learned across the agency and there will be accountability.”
In the wake of the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011, NASA awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to build independent ferry ships to carry astronauts to and from the space station. SpaceX, awarded an initial $2.6 billion contract, has now launched 13 piloted Crew Dragon flights for NASA and seven purely commercial missions.
Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams strike a pose in front of their T-38 jet trainer before launch on the Starliner mission in June 2024. NASA
In contrast, Boeing, awarded an initial $4.2 billion contract, ran into multiple problems during an unpiloted Starliner test flight in 2019 that eventually required a second crew-less test flight before Wilmore and Williams were finally launched on June 5, 2024, on what has been the ship’s lone crewed test flight.
The trip to space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket went smoothly and the crew successfully docked with the International Space Station the next day. But the capsule experienced multiple helium propulsion system leaks along the way and several maneuvering jets did not produce the expected thrust.
“During the rendezvous and proximity operations, propulsion anomalies cascaded into multiple thruster failures and a temporary loss of six-degree-of-freedom control,” Isaacman said Thursday. “The controllers and the crew performed with extraordinary professionalism … and docking was achieved.
“It is worth restating what should be obvious,” he said. “At that moment, had different decisions been made, had thrusters not been recovered or had docking been unsuccessful, the outcome of this mission could have been very different.”
Williams and Wilmore downplayed the malfunctions during the flight, which was originally expected to last about eight days. But NASA and Boeing ended up extending their stay in orbit, carrying out weeks of tests and analysis to determine whether the Starliner could be trusted to safely bring its crew back to Earth.
By August 2024, Boeing managers were convinced engineers understood the problems and the crew could safely come home in the Starliner. But NASA managers ruled that option out. Instead, they decided to keep the astronauts aboard the station until early 2025 when they could hitch a ride back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ship.
To make that possible, a Crew Dragon was launched in September 2024 with just two astronauts aboard instead of four as originally planned. That freed up two seats for Wilmore and Williams after the SpaceX crew completed their six-month stay in space.
The Starliner, meanwhile, successfully made an uncrewed return to Earth in September 2024 even though, the investigation report revealed, additional propulsion problems left the craft with no available backup options had another failure occurred.
The mission, “while ultimately successful in preserving crew safety, revealed critical vulnerabilities in the Starliner’s propulsion system, NASA’s oversight model and the broader culture of commercial human spaceflight,” the investigation team concluded.
The panel issued 61 formal recommendations “across technical, organizational, and cultural domains to address these issues before the next crewed Starliner mission.”
“The report underscores that technical excellence, transparent communication, and clear roles and responsibilities are not just best practices, they are essential to the success of any future commercial spaceflight missions,” the team said. “The lessons from CFT must be institutionalized to ensure that safety is never compromised in pursuit of schedule or cost.”
For its part, Boeing said in a statement the company had made “substantial progress” on corrective actions “and driven significant cultural changes across the team that directly align with the findings in the report.”
“NASA’s report will reinforce our ongoing efforts to strengthen our work…in support of mission and crew safety, which is and must always be our highest priority. We’re working closely with NASA to ensure readiness for future Starliner missions and remain committed to NASA’s vision for two commercial crew providers.”
（注：图片实际内容为2025年2月7日，华盛顿特区退伍军人事务部总部外的部门徽章）