Nasa ranks 2024 spacecraft mishap among its worst disasters

South China Morning Post · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Nasa on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space.The US space agency labelled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a “Type A” mishap - the same classification of the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters - a category that reflects the “potential for a significant mishap,” it said.The failures left a pair of Nasa astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months in a mission that captured global attention and became a political flashpoint.“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It’s decision-making and leadership,” Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman said in a briefing.03:02Nasa astronauts finally back on Earth after 9-month delayNasa astronauts finally back on Earth after 9-month delay“If left unchecked,” he said, this mismanagement “could create a culture incompatible with human space flight”.