New Trump-appointed NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman criticized his own agency for a series of failures that stranded two astronauts aboard the International Space Station for months.
Isaacman, who was confirmed in December after Trump withdrew, and then reinstated, the billionaire’s nomination to the role, wrote in a letter published on Thursday that the path NASA took during the Starliner Crewed Flight Test in 2024 “did not reflect NASA at its best.”
While he also criticized Boeing, noting that “Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected,” the 43-year-old emphasized that “the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It is decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.”
Specifically, he criticized NASA managers for failing to intervene in order to ensure Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams could return sooner.
The two astronauts flew aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, 2024, but the ship had “helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters” as it docked on the International Space Station on June 6.
NASA determined that it was unsafe for the pair to return using the Boeing spacecraft. The pair were finally evacuated and flown back to Earth on a SpaceX flight on March 18, 2025, ultimately spending more than nine months in space.
In his letter, Isaacman described Starliner’s debut as a “Type A mishap,” something that could endanger a crew, and argued it was a mistake that it was not designated as such from the start.
He said that NASA will continue to work with Boeing, but that the agency “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.”
In a public statement, Boeing said that the company “has made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered 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, and the work of all Commercial Crew Partners, in support of mission and crew safety, which is and must always be our highest priority.”
Isaacman’s appointment to the space agency was mired in controversy after Republicans expressed concerns about his past donations to Democrats, including Sen. Mark Kelly, whom President Trump has accused of sedition.
He also battled accusations that he maintained a close friendship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, telling the committee at his second confirmation hearing, “Every story I see that writes about my nomination refers to the Musk ally or the Musk friend.”
“It’s funny that in a world where everybody has a phone with a camera on it, there are no pictures of us at dinner, at a bar, on an airplane, or on a yacht, because they don’t exist.”
Isaacman, a billionaire who made his fortune by creating Shift4, also founded Draken International, the largest operator of tactical aircraft in the world. Having set the record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet in 2009, Isaacman set his sights on spaceflight, commanding the first orbital mission with no professional astronauts aboard when he launched Inspiration4 with SpaceX in 2021.
He then became one of the first two civilians to embark on a spacewalk as part of the Polaris Dawn mission in 2024.
