Boeing's next Starliner spacecraft to fly won't carry NASA astronauts when it launches in April 2026

Over a decade ago, NASA picked Boeing to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station, agreeing to pay billions of dollars for up to a half-dozen crewed flights. Some of those flights, it turns out, may not happen, and the next Starliner to fly won't carry any astronauts at all.

NASA on Monday (Nov. 24) announced that Boeing's next Starliner mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will carry only cargo and supplies, and no crew. It will launch no earlier than April 2026, the agency said in a statement.

"The next Starliner flight, known as Starliner-1, will be used by NASA to deliver necessary cargo to the orbital laboratory and allow in-flight validation of the system upgrades implemented following the Crew Flight Test mission last year.," agency officials said in the statement.

NASA and Boeing also agreed to reduce the number of crewed flights to the space station by Starliner by at least two missions. That means that instead of the up to six Starliner crew rotation flights Boeing agreed to fly for NASA under a $4.2 billion contract set in 2014, the company will only have to fly up to four missions, with "the remaining two available as options," NASA said.

The news comes as Boeing works to resume Starliner crew flights after its beleaguered Crew Flight Test 1. That mission launched two NASA astronauts — Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — to the International Space Station (ISS) on the first crewed Starliner in 2024, only to return to Earth without them due to thruster system concerns.

Wilmore and Williams originally planned to spend 10 days in space, but eventually spent more than nine months in orbit while waiting for a ride home on a Dragon spacecraft built by Boeing's competitor SpaceX. (SpaceX has its own multi-billion dollar contract to fly NASA astronauts to and from the ISS, and has done so regularly since 2020.) The Starliner astronauts returned to Earth in March 2025, more than six months after the Starliner capsule landed on its own in September 2024.

Since Starliner's landing, Boeing engineers have worked to address thruster system issues in order to begin operational crewed flights under its NASA contract. The delays for crewed Starliner flights followed years of delays after the company's first uncrewed Starliner test flight failed to meet up with the ISS as planned in December 2019, which ultimately led to a second uncrewed test in May 2022 ahead of the star-crossed crewed test flight in 2024.

"NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year," Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, said in the statement on Monday. "This modification allows NASA and Boeing to focus on safely certifying the system in 2026, execute Starliner’s first crew rotation when ready, and align our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on station's operational needs through 2030."

NASA currently plans to retire the International Space Station in 2030, marking the end of what will by then be 30 years of continuous crewed operations. The 450-ton space station will be commanded to deorbit and burn up over the Pacific Ocean. Huge pieces of it are expected to survive long enough to plunge into a watery grave known as Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard in the Pacific.