NASA shows it's lost confidence in Boeing's ability to police its own work on Starliner space capsul

Source: Washington Post

NASA shows it’s lost confidence in Boeing’s ability to police its own work on Starliner space capsule

The space agency will embed software experts alongside Boeing’s engineers to increase oversight

By Christian Davenport
3/6/2020, 3:04:03 p.m.

In the initial days and weeks after Boeing’s test flight of its new spacecraft went awry, the company and NASA went to great lengths to highlight the positives of the mission — how, as NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said then, “a lot of things went right.”

But more than two months after the test mission was cut short by what Boeing and NASA now acknowledge were potentially catastrophic software errors, the space agency is being far more blunt about the poor performance of one of its most trusted contractors and dictating the steps Boeing must take to fix the serious problems that have been uncovered.

In a call with reporters Friday, NASA officials said an independent investigation of the marred test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has produced 61 corrective actions and identified 49 gaps in Boeing’s testing procedures. A decision on whether Boeing will be allowed to proceed with flying astronauts or have to redo the test mission without humans on board may be months away, they said.

“We could have lost a spacecraft twice during this mission,” said Doug Loverro, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and mission operations. “So clearly this was a close call.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/06/nasa-shows-its-lost-confidence-boeings-ability-police-its-own-work-starliner-space-capsule/