NASA has delivered its most severe public rebuke yet over Boeing’s troubled Starliner crewed test flight—officially reclassifying the mission as a “Type A mishap,” the agency’s highest-level failure designation, and warning that the real danger was not just hardware, but “decision making and leadership” at the top.

The mission was supposed to be a short, confidence-building demonstration—an eight-day stay at the International Space Station. Instead, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams remained on the ISS for more than nine months as NASA grappled with Starliner’s propulsion and performance problems and ultimately chose to bring the spacecraft back uncrewed, relying on SpaceX for the ride home.

A newly released NASA investigation—roughly 300 pages—describes a program strained by technical failures and a culture of risk tolerance that investigators say does not belong anywhere near human spaceflight. Reuters reported the document recounts heated, emotionally charged meetings and breakdowns in coordination between Boeing and NASA personnel at critical moments, undermining clean decision-making when the margin for error was already razor-thin.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the incident should have been treated as a top-tier mishap sooner and criticized both Boeing and NASA managers for allowing the situation to drift into a prolonged, high-stakes standoff in orbit.

The consequence is immediate and stark: Starliner remains grounded, and NASA’s goal of maintaining two independent U.S. crew-transport systems is still on life support. The report’s warning is louder than any press conference: this wasn’t “bad luck in space.” It was a preventable chain of choices—one that NASA now says came far too close to catastrophe.