NASA Briefing LIVE | NASA Administrator Update On Butch Wilmore & Sunita William LIVE | NASA LIVE

I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from bloom hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there will be some time tagged events that in the flight software that they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do th use those same configurations uh obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve Stitch um in one of the previous Bri briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full crew rotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying coso to and from the space station with st liner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine imag in discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or uncrewed and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintain that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do with Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene clots at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during oft one and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starline or back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is that the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight test two have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the Deber burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more heat Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off in the deorbit burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared uh the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimize the changes required on Mission data loads uh they were going to take the actual software that we plan to use and and put it through its Paces in um in the uh facility that's a hardware software integration facility that Boeing has the team has been doing um practice administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew n next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well Boeing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our our crudee access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by Nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program Mission directorate and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program and the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida a hurricane through here while their homes are damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life and general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks Jim and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meetings so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um I also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test to um finish those preparations and we'll have another part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for starliners next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um AET rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh Tes um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight Ren review part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nomally uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew 9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballast in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle when Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet we will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight Readiness review with a flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for 2 years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana Wile thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh this historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are 6 months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this eight month stays very much within our normal operational experience spase while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us uh a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before the crew 9 V vehicle arrives uh crew 9 with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle so that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the SpaceX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soyes exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical team they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm night thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home UNCW the ground teams will still be fully engaged uring Starliner returns safely know while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration in moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities is evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when liner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with Butch and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew 9 Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew 9 Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded uh human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah and then back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or Ken Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trust um I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you need trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronaut's home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with Boeing mean I'll startor I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess caner well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happened to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the White Sands uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the Nas and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a do at burn it has to do all the things things we needed to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think uh as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think uh you should understand the the trust is two ways Technic uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and and your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home Butch and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test dat data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you uh your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the white sand testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation in thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer poet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellent so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 PB Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the addtion thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with AET um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit Sand's results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner U with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Marsha Don on the phone lines Marsha Don from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or uncrewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you've worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew N9 launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Marissa para with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies is available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that boing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen Fischer from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics uh going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander HUD Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and he would uh look like that a shot gun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere spere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room y back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply state it to the Folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day today now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with but and sunny that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their family I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go Ford and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Evan Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now uh to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and it's Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fix price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if you're question prend something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill Nelson did Kelly orberg say uh when you talk to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or 10 I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um a kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starliner FES astronauts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing fly an additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certified Starliner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test read in this review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll that you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 to zero 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the NASA engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the uh engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think did I get everybody and that was and that was again all everybody concurred uh with with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people uh during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about if Starliner about Starliner returning un cruit if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh I'd save and pose to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can you please tell us in layman terms why now NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting fo and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties due to the inability to predict with certainty that thrust performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew n that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep Butch and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do space walks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew N9 and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but uh generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth changen from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for administrator Nelson how you express conf that Bing will continue but it's also a first price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 $1.6 billion are you saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with a space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent X will they spend why to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit uh to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh will be done via ground commanding and then the there'll be some time tagged events that in the flight software that they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do th use those same configurations uh obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve Stitch um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full crew rotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying cosns to and from the space station with Starliner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine um discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the f Focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or un cruded and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the boing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't ECT that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do a Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene CLS at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of 1 and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is the the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight Test 2 have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISF and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the Deber burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off and the durb burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequences minimize the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew nine next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to this to him I told him uh how well Boeing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundance and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starline our home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission director and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physic that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program in the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida a hurricane through here while their homes were damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks Jim and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meeting so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um I also want to thank everybody who uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thinking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um ajet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Cent Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that dat it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh Tes um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight Ren review part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew nine we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballast in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle when Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight read review with the flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave but and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are six months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this 8mon stays very much within our normal operational experience base while butchen are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us a a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before before the crew 9 vehicle arrives uh crew 9 with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle so that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the SpaceX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soyes exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home UNC crew the ground teams will still be fully engaged uring star liner returns safely now while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've had ask questions they seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration in moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration and a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with but and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew N9 Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew nine Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or kener Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trust um I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you you trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with boing you I'll sorry I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess caner well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the wh Sands uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the Nas and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a at burn has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think uh as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think uh you should understand the the trust is two ways AR Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and in your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home Butch and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with boing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer popet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 pound Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the adci thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with aoet um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit sand results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Marsha Don on the phone lines Mara D from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or uncrewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission youve worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew n launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa para from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Marissa par with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to space more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing uh finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen Fischer from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander Hoot Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and he would look like the that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room y back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply stated to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I've talked about with but and that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging uh you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for that what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Evan Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but uh your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and it's Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional boing has had to to spend so uh my answer your your posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question prends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill milon did Kelly orberg say uh when you talk to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or 10 I'm reading some contract language from B most recent uh modification that says um a kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starliner F astronauts 2 and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing fly an additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certified Starliner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test redin review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we've fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 0 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the NASA engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the uh engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think did I get everybody and that was and that was again all everybody heard with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people uh during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to m maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about if Starliner about Starliner returning un cruit if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh i' save and POs to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can you please tell us in Layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties due to the inability to predict with certainty that Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew 9 that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years years ago to uh train and keep Butch and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do spacewalks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew n and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth changen from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for administrator Nelson uh you Express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a first price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion dollar are you saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with a space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent X will they spend why to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there'll be some time tagged events that in the flight software they they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do th use those same configurations obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yeah hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve Stitch um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full crew rotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmos on the space CRA um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying coso to and from the space station with Starliner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine um discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussion you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or un crude and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do with Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene clots at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of one and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there's some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risk to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is that the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight Test 2 have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um sea degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two doct hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the deorbit burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the Maneuvers required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard doghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off in the durb but burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimize the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew nine next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well boing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission director and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the compli ated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program in the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida hurc came through here while their homes are damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks jam and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meetings so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um I also want to thank thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next step um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh week nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team is uh displaying played uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learn more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um ajet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our wh Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally uh we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh test um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight R review part two what we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we will review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh in to the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballasted in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle when Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew 8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet we will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight Readiness review with flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are six months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this eight month stays very much within our normal operational experience base while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us uh a contingency capability after Starliner parts and before the crew 9 vehicle arrives uh crew 9 with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle so that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the SpaceX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission some somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soes exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home UNC crew the ground teams will still be fully engaged assuring Starliner returns safely now while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration in moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities is evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human expiration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with but and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew n Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew nine Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim orer Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trustan space flight is a business that's built on trust you trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with boing you know I'll sorry I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess caner well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back un crw it needs to land at the White Sands uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the NASA and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute do over burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built uh Upon a relationship and I think as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think you should understand the the trust is two ways bur with ARs Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and and your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home which and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer pop Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 lb Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with aret um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit s results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Marsha Don on the phone lines Marsha Don from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the of folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or un crude um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you've worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew 8 uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew n launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this verar with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program program all right next question from the phones Kristen fiser from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Columbia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics uh going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the coal weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander hot Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and he would uh looked like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room y back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply stated it to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with binan that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging ing um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to PVE the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for that what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Evan Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but uh your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much uh additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question pretends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill Milson did Kelly orberg say uh when you talked to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or 10 I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um a kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starliner FES astronuts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing fly an additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certifi Starliner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test redin review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another a crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've gotten a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize as we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 to Z 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the nasan engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the uh engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think did I get everybody and that was and that was again uh everybody concurred uh with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about this Starliner about Starliner returning un crew if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we will look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh I save and POs to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can you please tell us and layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties due to the inability to predict with certainty that Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew n that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dan has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep Butch and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do space walks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew n and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth this space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth changen from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for administrator Nelson how you express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a first price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion doar are you're saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with here space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there will be some time tagged events that in the flight software they they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do th use those same configurations uh obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yeah hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve Stitch um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full crew rotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmo on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying cosns to and from the space station with Starliner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or uncrewed and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do a Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene cloths at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of 1 and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there's some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nomal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is that the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight Test 2 have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um SE degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the deorbit burn was successful on of uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we' also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off in the durb but burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimize the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew9 next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well boing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is the result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our Northstar and I'm grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission director and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program and the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes the hurricane through Florida a hurrian through here while their homes were damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks jam and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meeting so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that UNC uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point um very proud of the due diligence that the team is uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um ajet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in EXP expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally uh we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner un crude and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh test um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight run interview part two we we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we'll review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew 9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballasted in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle once Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew eight vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight read review with a flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are six months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this8 month stays very much within our normal operational experience phas while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us uh a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before the crew n vehicle arrives uh crew 9 with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the space X31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that so exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you Dana uh I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home UNC crew the ground teams will still be fully engaged assuring star liner returns safely no the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions theyve seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration in moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with but and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew n Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or Ken or Steve I I let you decide my question is about trust um I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you need trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with Boeing you know I'll start I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess caner you well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now we the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back UNCW it needs to land at the Whit Sands uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the NASA and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built upon a relationship and I think as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think uh you should understand the the trust is two ways Eric with ARs Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and and your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home which and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer poet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dog housee cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500lb Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with AET um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit sand results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from marshad Don on the phone lines marshad Don from ass press yes hi um for you Ken I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous of amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or un cruded um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asking not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission youve worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew n launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Brar with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen fiser from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics uh going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah and Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander Hoot Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and he would uh looked like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room y back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply stated it to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing um right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with bu and that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different difference it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to PVE the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for the what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Ean Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that uh that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now uh to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving EnV environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question pretends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill Milson did Kelly orberg say uh when you talked to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or 10 I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um a kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starlin F astronauts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing fly an additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certifi Starliner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test readin review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we've fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that and in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize as we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris DAV ort from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was was part of that poll is it like 10 to Z 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the nasan engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody on missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think did I get everybody and that was and that was again and everybody concurred with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about if Starliner about Starliner attorney un cruited if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh i' save and POs to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can can you please tell us in layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties due to the inability to predict with certainty that Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats as SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then and we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew 9 that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us and I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep but and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do space walks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew nine and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth Chang from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for ad min Nelson how you express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a first price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion doar are you're saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with their space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you for on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit uh to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there'll be some time tagged events the in the flight software they they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do those use those same configurations uh obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve Stitch um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full Creer rotation missions of Starliner before they would put their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying cosns to and from the space station with Starliner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or un crude and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do with Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene CLS at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of one and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is that the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight test two have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we had haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the deorbit burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off and the dob but burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimize the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bower Soxs commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew n next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well boing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission director and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA in the commercial crew program and the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes hurricane through Florida hurricane through here while their homes were damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks Jim and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meeting so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um are Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um airjet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally uh we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that date it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner UNR and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the UN recw uh test um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight review part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we'll review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good setup in terms of opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew N9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballast in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle one Starliner on dock it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet will'll go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight Readiness review with a flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are 6 months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this 8- month stays very much within our normal operational experience base while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us a a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before the crew n vehicle arrives uh crew n with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle so that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the SpaceX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soy exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home uncrewed the ground teams will still be fully engaged uring Starliner returns safely know while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they've seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration in moving forward space FL is hard the margins are them the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with Butch and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not not to mention that this decision also affects the crew n Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or kener Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trust I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different Direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with Boeing you know I'll start I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess coner you well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the Whit sand uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the NASA and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a do over at burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have work toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than boing did so and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's it's built uh upon a relationship and I think as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think you should understand the the trust is two ways Eric B with ARs Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and in your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home which and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you uh your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the trust or the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us and that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer popet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought another words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the doghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500lb Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with AO jet um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit Sand's results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner U with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Mara Don on the phone lines Mara D from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unque unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or uncrewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything CU boing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you've worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew n launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Brar with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct you there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen Fischer from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics uh going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to Launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they'd inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander hot Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and and he would uh look like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room yeah back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply state it to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with but andan that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for the what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Ean Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that uh that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now uh to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question pretends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill Milson did Kelly orberg say uh when you talked to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or 10 I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um a kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starliner F astronauts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing fly an additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certifi Starliner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test Readiness review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of of us or or what we've fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes asked that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 to zero 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the NASA engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the uh engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think that I get everybody and that was and that was again all everybody concurred uh with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people uh during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about if Starliner about Starliner returning uncrewed if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission fa failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conf conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh i' save and pose to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can you please tell us in layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties due to the in AB ility to predict with certainty the Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats as SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew nine and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew n that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep Butch and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do spacewalks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew nine and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth changen from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for for administrator Nelson how you express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a first price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion doar are you're saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with their space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basic basically that they've spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space station a little quick quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there'll be some time tagged events the in the flight software they they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do use those same configurations uh obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana wo perhaps uh Steve stit um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full cre rotation missions of Starline before they would put one of their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the P forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying cosns to and from the space station with Starliner point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or un crw and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do with Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene clots at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of 1 and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach the station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is that the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight test two have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the deorbit burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off in the durit burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission dat loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimized associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew n next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly Berg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well Boeing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most Ro routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to boing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission directorate and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material property properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program and the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida a hurricane through here while their homes were damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks jam and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meeting so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile and test ing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um our Bo uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um ajet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacture Mo all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce course we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a SE sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh test um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight run riew part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we'll review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the deal over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good set up in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew 9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballasted in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle one Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet will'll go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight read review with a flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are six months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this eight month stays very much within our normal operational experience base while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the crew8 dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us a a contingent capability after Starliner departs and before the crew n vehicle arrives uh crew 9 with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the space X31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that so's exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is uh critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home uncrewed the ground teams will still be fully engaged uring star liner returns saf now while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability fluxibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they've seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration in moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge difference dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with Butch and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be Miss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew 9 Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or Ken or Steve I I let you decide my question is about trust um mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you need trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with boing mean I'll startor I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think k at it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess coner that you well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the wh Sands uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the Nas and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a do burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think uh as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think you should understand the the trust is two ways Eric with ar Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on the question about Boeing and in your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home Butch and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you uh your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with going in kind of layout what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer poet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 PB Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with arrow jet um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the white sand results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the together uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Mara Don on the phone lines Mara D from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or un crude um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical author ities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situ of of loss and feeling like you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space fun in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew N9 launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Brar with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh boeings willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen Fisher from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander Hoot Gibson said it he he'd look at subsequent flights and he would look like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room yeah back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply state it to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with binan that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for the what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Ean Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that uh that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now uh to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but uh your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this Pro program is working like it should now if your question prends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from reers thanks uh for Bill nson did Kelly orberg say uh when you talk to him whether boing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or 10 I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um it kind of broadly defines certification that's coming after Starliner flies astronauts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing fly an additional test mission before it gets it certification or might NASA change those requirements and certify Starliner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test redin review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the dat and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowers so just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 to zero 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the NASA engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody I think I get body and that was and that was again everybody concurred with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people uh during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about if star L ER about Starliner returning un cruit if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission fa failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh i' save and pose to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can you please tell us in layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties do the inability to predict with certainty that Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew n vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew n that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep Butch and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do spacewalks robotics some of the research so um we had them train they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly aut ated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew n and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth Chang from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for administrator Nelson how you express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion dollars are you saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with their space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you posed which is basically that they've spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um Sierra's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg I thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made a Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there will be some time tagged events the in the flight software that they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do use those same configurations uh obviously we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve stit um in one of the previous briefings who was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full Creer rotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the C for and um you know what the the options will be for flying cosns to and from the space station with Starliner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or UNR and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintain that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do with Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene clots at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of 1 and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return star liner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is the the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight test two have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the debert burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off and the dobit burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimize the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to admin Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew nine next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well boing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to boing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like to communicate all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission directorate and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic on technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program in the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida a hurricane through here while their homes are damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowers Soxs and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks jam and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meetings so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um I also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or uncrewed um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to Pro process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it is just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um ajet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuver from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk but the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh test um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight Rance review part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we'll review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the deal over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew 9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballasted in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle when Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet we will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight Readiness review with flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for 2 years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are 6 months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this 8mth stays very much within our normal operational experience base while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the crew8 dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us a a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before the crew n vehicle arrives uh crew9 with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have Crew 8 undock after that we will relocate the crew nine vehicle so that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the space EX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy Ed crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soy's exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is uh critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home uncrewed the ground teams will still be fully engaged assuring Starliner return safely now while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they've seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exporation there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration and moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight in the Thruster issue in the associated investigation will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with but and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew n Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for but and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded uh human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting yourself to one question question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or kener Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trust uh I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with Boeing mean I'll start I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess ker St you well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back uncrewed it needs to land at the wh sand uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the Nas and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a burn it has to do all the things we needed to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh trust is a two way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think uh as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think uh you should understand the the trust is two ways Eric with ARs Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and in your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home Butch and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seemed like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would C cause the heating that causes that oxidizer poet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500lb Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with a jet um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have them understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the white sand results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we Take One path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Marsha Don on the phone lines Marsha Don from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crud or uncrewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate long-term view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you've worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew 8 uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew 9 launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Brar with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen Fischer from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Columbia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah and Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Columbia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and they as a matter of fact uh my commander Hoot Gibson said it he he' look at subsequent flights and he would uh look like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room yeah back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply state it to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with but andan that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the res to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for the what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Ean Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that uh that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now uh to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew what point and I I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but uh your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues in commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and development on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the companies Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question prends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill nson did Kelly orberg say uh when you talk to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or Ken I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um it kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starliner FES astronauts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see Boeing flying additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certify Starliner any way uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test redin review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what OB Ives are um in front of us or or what we've fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 to zero 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we pulled um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the nasan engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at uh NASA headquarters the ISS program the uh commercial crew program the engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Assurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you got just about everybody yeah I think did I get everybody and that was and that was again all everybody concurred with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people uh during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call if Starliner about Starliner returning un crude if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission fa failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve dress on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh I'd save and pose to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you from can you please tell us in layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was due to the uncertainties do the inability to predict with certainty the Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we started looking at ious options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up to empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew n that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep Butch and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do space walks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew N9 and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to de develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to low earth orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth changen from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for administrator Nelson uh you express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion dollars are you saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with their space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for crew thank you thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about Sierra space um seer's working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that direction in the the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modifications if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there will be some time tagged events that in the flight software that they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do th use those same configurations uh obviously we've got got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and uh we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve stit um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full cotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying Kuts to and from the space station with ster at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA a team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or un crude and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ross Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do as Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene clots at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during oft 1 and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions Irene uh what I would say is that the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight Test 2 have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the debber burn was successful on oft uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the vehicle and then also the maneuverings required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not surprise me to to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off and the dobit burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimized the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew nine next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that b has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well Boeing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and tooing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot I'd like i' like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission director and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening uh inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our program is atic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program and the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has G on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida a hurricane through here while their homes are damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school in life and general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bower Sox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks jman thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meetings so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um I also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude or UNCW um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed uncrewed with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the day data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um AET rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our Whit Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across to all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crude was very difficult for me personally we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh Tes um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight R review part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we'll review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nominal uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we'll land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew 9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballast in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the the crew8 vehicle when Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the Lifeboat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet we will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have have an important simulation ahead of that flight Readiness review with a flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll turn it over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are 6 months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this 8mon stays very much within our normal operational experience base while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us uh a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before the crew n vehicle arrives uh crew nine with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have crew8 undock after that we will relocate the crew9 vehicle so that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the SpaceX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soes exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over a norm night thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home UNCW the ground teams will still be fully engaged uring star liner returns safely now while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living in working 260 Mi above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an intergral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and Readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they've seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for expiration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration and moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue in the associate investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with but and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew n Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded uh human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate you limiting your to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or kener Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trust um I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you need trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with Boeing you I'll start I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess caner that you well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back UNCW it needs to land at the wh sand uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the NASA Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a over at burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh Trust is a two-way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think you should understand the the trust is to two ways ER with ar Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and in your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew Dragon would be the vehicle to bring the crew home Butch and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seems like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the o oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer poet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vaporization of the propelling so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 PB Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the adci thrusters so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with AET um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding of that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the Whit sand results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner U with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Marsha Don on the phone lines Marsha Don from Associated Press yes hi um for you Ken I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um the the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or uncrewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that disappointment to weigh unhealthily in your decision and so on purpose our system increases the volume on some of our voices from the technical authorities folks that are asked not to think about uh those emotions uh and and it helps to pull you away from the fact that you might be disappointed in a certain decision uh and then guide you towards that final outcome and and I would add on the mood in the room you know I think everybody is professional and did their jobs but there is a a sense of not accomplishing the mission that we set out to do and even for myself personally that that is a hard thing to go through it's a little bit of a a situation of of loss and feeling like uh you lost something and we haven't in the ultimate longterm view we have not lost anything because Boeing as the administrator Nelson said is committed to uh finding the solutions and flying Starliner again but I probably can't express in words what it's like when you commit to a mission you've worked on a mission so long and then we make a fairly dramatic change which which we have not done um in human space plan in a long time and so there's a feeling of loss uh and we'll work with our team to make sure we talk about that and we move forward from here because we need this team to focus uh not only on returning Starliner safely but we have uh a crew eight uh mission to return and reconfigure we have a crew N9 launch coming up as well and we need to focus on all those things we have a really busy time frame and we'll do that we'll talk to the team and and make sure they understand that it's nobody's fault and it's a normal feeling to have this feeling of of loss or that you didn't complete what you uh intended to do okay we'll take the next question also from the phone lines from Marissa par from NBC News hi everyone thanks so much for doing this Brar with NBC here Senator Nelson this could be for you or for anyone else who wants to join in um we heard a mention of a next space flight for Starliner a couple of times and we know how much uh NASA would like to have an alternative to SpaceX more companies available to provide the ability to shuttle astronauts to the ISS Senator Nelson how certain are you that Boeing will ever launch Starliner with a crew on board again 100% 100% correct there is no shadow of a doubt in your mind can you explain why uh because of what this uh panel has already told you uh the extensive Cooperative working relationship between NASA and Boeing of finding the problem but knowing that the uncertainties are what held up the crew getting on Starliner to go home and uh a certainty on my part that we will find out the uncertainty and uh Boeing's willingness to carry through on this program all right next question from the phones Kristen Fischer from CNN uh thank you my question is also for Senator Nelson Senator uh you were a member of the Congressional committee that investigated the Challenger accident you were a senator when Colombia happened how much did that experience influence your personal decision today thank you well very much um it has affected the decision today by this Collective group and all of those that participated in the flight test Readiness review this morning uh it is a trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of challenges and then led to the loss of Colombia where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth for example uh give you uh specifics going back to the loss of Challenger even the engineers in Utah in Morton thol were begging their management not to launch because of the cold weather and that information never got up and that was happening on the very night before the launch the next morning another example on Colombia uh astronauts would get through with their flights and they' inspect the Orbiter and that as a matter of fact uh my commander Hoot Gibson said it he' he'd look at subsequent flights and he would uh look like that a shotgun had been shot on the delicate silicon tiles because of so much of the foam shedding off of the external tank uh but there was a culture that did not bring that information up to the decision makers so NASA ever since has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind and I think uh right today is a good example of that do we have other questions in the room yeah back left good morning Cheryl Mercedes here with kou here in Houston Texas any of you can answer this question just really simply stated it to the folks at home who have no idea what these two astronauts are experiencing uh right now up an orbit um all they're hearing is the technical stuff and what we're reporting uh what do you have to say to those folks who are saying man these guys simply are going to miss out on the holidays with their families at home what's it like for them up there what are they experiencing day to day now with this decision and this news that it will now be months before they return thank you I'll I'll jump in on on this one um first off all the astronauts on station are professionals all those qualities I talked about with but andan that's exemplified in in every astronaut that flies to the International Space Station they're professionals when they launch they know that there are circumstances where they can be on board for up to a year so mentally you know you know that you could be in that situation now once you're in the arena obviously it's a little different it's challenging um you know it's disappointing that uh that they're not coming home on Starliner but that's okay it's a test flight that's what we do they knew those risks going in and but we keep them very busy there's a lot of science and research going on on the International Space Station that Dana can elaborate on and has elaborated on uh we keep them busy we keep them working and they are continuing to pave the road for human exploration going forward so it's great they're part of the crew um and they're doing fine what do you say to their families I care deeply about their families I know this is a huge impact um to their families and it means a lot um their families are the pillars that keep them strong they're the pillars that we at Nasa depend on for the workforce to keep us going uh they're the pillars that help this team uh with the crude flight test have the resilience to keep going especially over these last two months that that were needed to go forward and that's both at Nasa and Boeing so family is the backbone of what we do in the support structure so I tell their families thank you um thank you for their support thank you for that what they do to allow NASA and our commercial Partners to do what we do to explore space we're going to go back to the phone lines next is Ian Brown from Fox News hi good afternoon Ean Brown Fox News for administrator Nelson sir um I I can appreciate all the uh uh the technical and R&D review here that uh that's being detailed for us and and the the investment everyone has in this but I'd like to ask you about the investment we as taxpayers have given to Boeing over I think it's at least 15 years now to the it's been hundreds of millions from seed money to to selecting them as providers for commercial crew at what point and I understand this is an oversight issue and it may come from something above the agency but uh your career has spanned both the agency and above the agency and I want to know how or when uh or what's the process for reviewing this contract to determine we're not we're not getting what we paid for as taxpayers um I I say this as uh knowing that there is a public sentiment that is very skeptical of Boeing as a corporation right now not just due to this but also due to their other issues and commercial Aviation um so I'd like to know when those discussions happen and and how they happen and and what gets discussed to specifically answer your question you remember when we started the commercial program one of the advantages of the commercial program was that it was going to be a fixed price contract uh so much of NASA's research and devel Vel M on in a very unforgiving environment space that is very hard and is Cutting Edge technology and it is very expensive and as a result on the normal way of Contracting Cost Plus it will run the cost way up not so with the commercial crew program and that was part of the negotiation for both of the compan ianes Boeing and SpaceX and they've got a uh a fixed price and if you uh check the record you can find out how much additional Boeing has had to to spend so uh my answer you're you're posturing the question of what I would answer in front of a congressional committee about the cost uh is that this program is working like it should now if your question portends something else then speak it but I think that's what you were getting at okay we'll go to Joey roulette from Reuters thanks uh for Bill milon did Kelly orberg say uh when you talk to him whether Boeing would pay for an additional test mission before Starliner gets certified and um for Steve or or K I'm reading some contract language from Boeing's most recent uh modification that says um a kind of broadly defined certification is coming after Starliner FES astronauts to and from the ISS and so I know there's a lot of data that you guys are going to get on the return leg but since it's coming back empty and based on what we've seen so far will NASA want to see going fly additional test mission before it gets its certification or might NASA change those requirements and certif star liner anyway uh Joey uh it did not come up nor would it have been appropriate for in a conversation of which I'm alerting him as to what the decision of the flight test Readiness review was that we would get into those matters yeah yeah we've we've started looking at the flight test objectives what we have already accomplished on this flight and what's remaining we we have not you know made a total determination yet of what objectives are um in front of us or or what we've fulfilled we'll take a little time to do that um you know I I don't think we have decided on the path yet of another crude flight test we have gotten a lot out of this vehicle so far it's been on orbit now for two and a half months which we didn't intend so we've got a lot of data out of that we'll have to sit down and and talk about the certification aspects after the flight it's a little premature to do that at this point so yeah we need to get the vehicle back on the ground and then analyze the data and be driven by that in our next decision uh but I wouldn't rule anything out right I mean there's we have we have options for how we move forward um the one thing I I do want to emphasize is we plan to work together with Boeing to find that path next we have Chris Davenport from The Washington Post hi thanks so much um I guess for Ken Bowersox just I want to follow up on that that poll which you said was unanimous I wonder if you can give us a number of votes cast that that was as part of that poll was it like 10 to zero 12 how how many votes were there thank you well uh so I I'll kind of go through just mentally all the orgs we ped um we unofficially uh asked the opinion of the NASA engineering NASA engineering and Safety Center the flight operations directorate uh the division director for ISS and uh commercial Leo development uh at NASA headquarters the ISS program the commercial crew program the engineering technical Authority uh the uh crew health and medical technical Authority safety Mission Insurance technical Authority um let's see who else did I leave out all the center directors from stennis Marshall uh JSC um and Kennedy Space Center where the commercial crew program is officially based um anybody I missed on that list I think you everybody I think I get everybody and that was and that was again all everybody concurred with proceeding uncrewed and they stated where they might have one or two people uh during our meeting uh that uh that had a different opinion and tried to give those folks an opportunity to talk to the group we'll go to Micah maidenberg from Wall Street Journal thank you uh for administrator Nelson and Jim free uh there was a discussion on a previous call about if Starliner about Starliner returning un cruit if that would count as a loss of mission or Mission failure um what is your view on that and if you don't agree that it would be a loss of mission or Mission fa failure could you could you please explain why thanks uh yeah Mike I think we we uh so I let me go back to Echo something Steve said we've accomplished a lot on this Mission and learned a lot about this vehicle satisfied a lot of the objectives already um that stressed here by Steve stressed on previous press conferences we we'll look at this as we do any of our missions to see do does it fall into the any of the categories that we have that we Define uh as a mishap once we get the vehicle back um that that's our time to look at that so I think that's a question uh i' save and pose to us on the other side of of getting the vehicle back we'll go to Izzy Alvarez from ABC thank you can you please tell us in layman terms why NASA chose SpaceX to bring sunny and Butch home how did you come to that decision I can take a cut at that and we'll we'll see um uh you know when we looked at first of all we looked at the risk of uh putting Butch and sunny on the Starliner vehicle due to the issues with the thrusters that we've talked about and so when we looked at that risk we said that that risk was was due to the uncertainties due to the inability to predict with certainty that Thruster performance for the rest of the mission including holding the orientation of the vehicle for the deorbit burn and then maneuvering the vehicle for the separation of the crew module um and the service module when we came to that conclusion we started looking at what other options Dana and I both did what options do we have because these missions are really jointly shared between the ISS program and Commercial crew program and as we we started looking at various options it was obvious to both of us that the easiest and best option was to uh configure the crew9 vehicle uh with a couple empty seats uh on the way uphill to put ballast in those seats SpaceX had the capability um we also knew that we had um a space suit on orbit already that we could utilize for one of the crew members they've tried that on and that space suit Works uh both crew members tried on a space suit so we have a a space suit now we're going to launch for one of the other crew members on crew 9 and then we really wanted to give the crew you know a suited return like we always have in US space flight so when we started to weigh all those options it became very obvious that crew 9 was the best option fly up two empty seats have Butch and sunny join uh the increment crew and return on crew n that just became the easiest the best option and the most efficient option for all of us I'll see if Dana has anything to add yeah I would just add that um you know knowing that this was a test flight we made the decision a couple years ago to uh train and keep but and sunny current with all aspects of station some of the most complex things we do spacewalks robotics some of the research so um we had them trained they've obviously flown to station before they've done long duration missions both of them have and so again when you line that up with our vehicle options and the fact that the dragon space spacecraft is highly automated um as you all know we've used it for private astronaut missions we do have a lot of experience taking uh people with much less training than what our classic training is for our NASA crew and having them fly on dragons and so when you look at that in aggregate it made a lot of sense to make the decision to adjust crew n and have them do a full Expedition and come home on a dragon and and one thing I'd like to add um a major goal of the commercial crew program is to develop um not just the capability to go back and forth to space station but a generic capability to go back and forth to lower orbit to develop a commercial capability um there's two reasons for that one is dissimilar redundancy so you have this option where if there's a problem on one vehicle um you might not have the same problem on another vehicle so so you could use them uh for a return or or or perhaps keep them flying while another vehicle is working through um recovery from some sort of a problem um but it's also to provide some competition uh in the environment uh and and competition is healthy in a lot of ways it uh causes you to develop your technology it causes you to get better pricing uh and and we would like to have that competition in the future uh so that's that's why we have more than one provider we're trying to develop next question is from Kenneth changen from The New York Times oh hi thank you um this is I guess is for administrator Nelson uh you express confidence that Bing will continue but it's also a first price contract so potentially they could lose they've already written up 1.5 1.6 billion dollars are you saying that you're confident that they will continue to write off money losing money on this and I guess the second question is has there been any discussion with air space uh about um converting Dreamchaser for true thank you on Sierra uh I will let somebody else uh answer that uh with regard to Boeing uh remember it's a fixed price contract uh we expect delivery on the contract and therefore uh there is no discussion at this point uh on NASA's part uh in the question that you pose which is basically that they've spent X will they spend y to get to where uh Boeing Starliner becomes a regular part of our crew rotation that's not uh I don't have the answer to that nor do I think we would have the answer now and I'll I'll add about CER space um sier is working very hard on their first maiden voyage of the Dreamchaser that's a cargo Mission um they've got the vehicle down at Kennedy and they're working through test and final assembly so it's it's the plan that they fly cargo missions to station through the rest of station and in fact that's the scope of the contract that we have with them to provide cargo capabilities there is no existing contract with the agency for crude capability which doesn't mean that that's not a possibility somewhere in the future in fact Sierra has their own goals about moving in that Direction in the future but for now the work and the focus is on getting them flying as a as a cargo flight and if you look back to how we started um SpaceX and the dragons that's a very similar approach we started with cargo flights first we flew a number of flights and then they eventually evolved into the crude version of the Dragon next question is from Lauren grush from Bloomberg hi thank you so much I'm wondering can you walk us through what mod modification if any will be made to Starliner ahead of its return now that it doesn't have a crew on board and will NASA be flying that return any differently or watching for anything specifically now that it's not now that it's performing this return without a crew thanks uh I'll I'll take the question relative to the the reconfiguration of Starliner there's a few things that we have to do differently as I I said earlier we're going to modify the separation sequence a little bit to to get away from the space station a little quicker than we had planned so that's one modification uh that will be done via ground commanding and then the there'll be some time tagged events the in the flight software that they'll execute there are a few items in the cockpit that have to be configured a little differently obviously if you had a crew on board some of the life support systems will be configured just like we did on the orbit flight Test 2 mission in 2022 we'll do those use those same configurations uh obviously ly we've got to do a little bit of planning relative to the center of gravity uh without the crew members being in the in the seats so we've looked at that already and that doesn't appear to be a big problem um so we've got a few things like that to go work on the teams have been really laying out all that data um the ground the ground teams will have a little bit different set of uh flight rules to operate from so so we'll uh they'll they'll have that uh ahead of them but there's a few minor things to the spacecraft to reconfigure and we're already in the process of of starting that work next question is from Will Robinson Smith from space flight now yes hi thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today um question I believe for uh Dana Wile perhaps uh Steve Stitch um in one of the previous briefings it was discussed that I think the Russians wanted to see it was one or two successful full crew rotation missions of Starliner before they would put one of their Cosmos on the spacecraft um has the agency had the opportunity to talk to uh Rose Cosmos about the pass forward and um you know what the the options will be for flying Cosmo to in from the space station with Starliner at this point Thank you sure our focus with all the uh International Partners as you can imagine um discussions about what's happening on board or changing launches or operations on board involve not just our NASA team but the entire International partnership and so similar to the discussions you've heard today the focus has been on the decision immediately in front of us with what to do with Starliner crude or un crude and in fact when we ended the uh review today I sent an email out to all of the the program managers across the International partnership so they understood the the decision so they've been following along with us um in terms of Ros Cosmos thinking about um our integrated crew exchanges and flying on the the Boeing vehicle they have always maintained that they want to see a few successful flights before they fly crew on it I don't expect that that'll change but we're not we're not actively having those discussions right now right now we're focused on what to do a Starliner but of course those are things we'll talk about in the future next question from Irene clots at Aviation week thanks very much um I think this is for Steve um as far as the uh the the Thruster issues um considering the return of the spacecraft and the performance during of 1 and two is the primary concern now that because there was the overheating during the approach to station that there is some uncertainty on how these thrusters are now going to perform um during the deorbit and uh can you also just give us an update on what the status is on Boeing's preparations to return Starliner without crew and uh what um if any additional risks to the spacecraft are and granted those are far below risks to crew but if there are any additional discs at this point in bringing Starliner back uncrewed since that's not the um nominal plan thanks yeah good good questions iene uh what I would say is the the thrusters uh on this flight relative to orbit flight Test 2 have experienced higher heating we had more thrusters fail off more thrusters um see degradation in fact you know one of them uh failed off and we haven't hot fired that we did two docked hot Fires at ISS and we've chosen not to utilize that Thruster at all but they've experienced a little more stress I would say than the previous flight even though the deorbit burn was successful on o uh the first orbit flight test and the second one these thrusters have experienced more stress more Heating And so there's there's a little bit more concern for how they would perform during the deorbit burn holding the orientation of the the vehicle and then also the maneuvering required after that we've also learned uh in the starboard dogghouse in particular there is extra heating that we have just discovered in the last two weeks and looking at the data a little more closely anytime an orbital maneuvering Thruster fires in that dogghouse uh there's there's higher Heating and so we had one Thruster on of2 uh in 2022 fail off after the deorbit burn um we it would not not surpris me to see uh one of the starboard a thrusters in that dogghouse fail off in the dobit burn for this flight so I would say a little higher heating a little bit more thermal and a little more uncertainty now that we understand the physics a little bit better for crew return um in terms of the preps of the vehicle um you know we've been getting uh the vehicle prepared um the team is on the ground really has gone through and looked at um uh the flight software that's that's on board is there any changes that need to be made to Mission data loads uh this technique of using a a very simplified step sequence is minimize the associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox commercial crew program manager Steve Stitch International Space Station program manager Dana wiel and flight operations director Norm Knight we'll be taking questions from those in the room and over the phone as a reminder you can press star one to get into the queue but for first I'd like to hand it over to administrator Nelson for opening remarks thanks NASA has decided that Butch and sunny will return with crew n next February uh and that Starliner uh will return uncrewed and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily uh I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision we want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS I have just talked to the new Boeing CEO Kelly ortberg uh I have expressed this to the to him I told him uh how well Boeing uh worked with our team to come to this decision and uh he expressed to me uh an intention that uh they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely and uh that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station uh this whole discussion remember is put in the context of we have had mistakes done in the past we lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward uh we have been very solicitous of all of our employees that if you have some objection you come forward space flight is risky even at its saf safest and even at its most routine and a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine and so the decision to keep Butch and sunny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety our core value is safety and it is our North Star and I'm grateful to NASA and to Boeing for their teams for all the incredible and detailed work to get to this decision turn it over to Jim thank you sir um thank you and Deputy Administrator melroy for your support along the way and certainly for being here today it means a lot lot I'd like to communicate to all of you that we've come to this decision using our our program our mission directorate and our agency level processes that includes the decisions that happen at the commercial crew program at the space operations mission directorate level and the agency level and includes all of our technical authorities from engineering safety medical and flight operations as the administrator said our focus is on safety all the time and this certainly is no different the uncertainty in our margins is where we have gone come to uh make the decision that the administrator laid out that uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters and still we still have some work to go you'll hear more from other on others on the specifics but I'll tell you that the NASA and Boeing team have made incredible technical progress in the model development that has gone on the Thruster testing understanding material properties within the valve and the complicated fluid physics that are happening inside we will continue uh to to learn we are a learning organization and I think we've demonstrated that here we'll learn from this effort so that our crews who are at the top of the pyramid on these missions and their families can continue to know we've done that and we'll always do our best for our team our programmatic and Technical teams both NASA and the commercial crew program and the space station program and our Boeing teammates have worked endlessly to get to launch and certainly in the past two months they've done this while the whole world has gone on around them hurricanes a hurricane through Florida a hurricane through here while their homes are damaged and without power they came to work some of them lost family members along the way their kids went back to school and life in general went on but they were here every day working long hours they have persevered and I want them to know how grateful I am that they are on our team this has not been an easy decision but it is absolutely the right one let me turn it over to Ken Bowersox and thank Ken and all the leaders here and the ones that are not here with us today uh for their work thanks Jim and thanks to you and the administrator for joining us for this press conference and for for our meeting so you guys have been heavily involved and we appreciate that um I also want to thank everybody who's uh here in the room with us and watching online it says a lot that you're with us on a Saturday um and and I want you to know how much we appreciate your support as we work to fly our mission safely um I'm really proud of the NASA team and the boing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months it's really been impressive to see um how they've uh been very agile in testing um Gathering data and completing analysis um and then having the tough discussions that go along with um processing that data and coming to conclusions um our intent today was to have the first part of a flight Readiness review um the goal of that review was to come up with a NASA recommendation on whether we should proceed with the crude flight test um either crude crud or uncrewed um our Boeing uh Partners told us that they would be able to execute either option and they thought that the call belonged to NASA because of our wider um view of all the risks involved um uh we conducted a poll um all of the organizations uh on the polling sheet indicated that uh they thought we should proceed UNCW with the with the flight test um and so uh our next step will be uh to to process uh toward that uncrewed uh flight test um to um finish those preparations and we'll have another uh part two of the Readiness review um Wednesday or Thursday next week we believe um to to make sure that we're we're ready for undock and to complete the test um we are still in the middle of a test flight we have to remain Vigilant um we need to get the vehicle back on Deck uh go through the data and once we've done that um we'll we'll start thinking about our next steps um for Starliner next flight and now I'd like to pass the the mic to Steve to share more info and more details thanks Ken and thanks for the kind words uh I want to thank all of you for being here and uh the public and everybody for following our progress over the summer uh it's it's been a long summer it's been a long summer for our team and I want to first start out by thanking our team who's worked so hard over the summer um long hours uh weekends nights testing analysis reviews I mean it has just been an incredible effort by the team um we are dealing with a very complex issue with the thrusters and I'll talk more about that but it's challenging to predict their performance it's challenging to predict the temperatures we'll see and so that's why it's it's been tough and it's taken the time ever since uh we docked back in on June 6th to get to to this point I'm very proud of the due diligence that the team has uh displayed uh their perseverance their fortitude courage uh dedication resilience as they learned more and we got more data and different results at times than we expected I especially want to thank the Boeing team and their contractor team um ajet rocked uh the engine manufacturer uh the valve manufacturer Moog all their suppliers that participated uh along with uh the NASA Workforce we have brought in expertise from just about every NASA Center we did testing at the Marshall space flight center of course our wh Sands test facility did testing on the thrusters so this has been a huge effort across all of NASA uh within the commercial crew program and even Beyond um determining the position uh to bring Starliner back on crewed was very difficult for me personally uh we're all committed to the mission which we started out which is to bring Butch and sunny back but as we got more and more data over the summer and understood the uncertainty of that data it became very clear to us that the best course of action was to return Starliner uncrewed and I'll talk about the other aspects of the mission uh in a little bit um you know um the the bottom line relative to Bringing Starliner back is it was just there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters if we had a model if we had a way to to accurately predict uh what the thrusters would do for the undock and all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence I think we would have taken a different course of action but when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for Thruster failures with a crew on board uh and then getting into this very tight sequence of finishing the deorbit burn which puts the vehicle on an entry and then immediately uh maneuvering from that into a sep sequence to separate the service module and crew module it was just too much risk with the crew and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed uh test um the path forward now is to as Ken said work toward the flight R review part two will we review now we know the scope of the mission we know it's an uncrewed test flight uh we are changing the separation sequence that we planned and we'll review those aspects at the Readiness review we're going to go with a simplified uh separation technique to get away from station a little more quickly um we'll get to the de over at burn and execute that nominally uh we have a good setup in terms of the opportunities uh into the Whit sand space Harbor for a number of opportunities in September um we'll we land or undock in early September and then we have a lot of work to do uh relative to the the rest of the mission which is Bush and sunny stay on the space station for some time and they return on crew 9 we're configuring that spacecraft with a couple extra uh two different seats so we'll have two different crew members uh two crew members on that vehicle and then we'll have it ready to bring Butch and sunny home so they'll be ballasted in two seats on the uphill um we also have to work to reconfigure the The Crew 8 vehicle when Starliner undocks it will undock first and then the crew8 vehicle will serve as the life boat for Butch and sunny we have a configuration on the cargo pallet we will go put in place so again um we'll get Calypso home ready to do so we're going to take uh our time taking the steps uh each step along the way we'll have an important simulation ahead of that flight read review with a flight control team you know if you put yourself in their place they have practiced uh for two years to bring a crew home on Starliner there are some differences uh in executing the undock sequence and the uh Coast to the deorbit burn and the deorbit burn without a crew and so they're going to practice that next week um I'm extremely grateful for the commercial crew program the entire team uh it's an honor to represent them here today and I'll over to Dana wiel thank you Steve thank you all very much for being here for your interest in this uh historic test flight Mission and also in the International Space Station um as you heard with the decision to leave Butch and sunny on board till February they'll be with us on station for eight months I think most of you know our normal Expedition durations are 6 months long but we have had a number of uh flights with astronauts who stayed on board with us for 12 months at a time so this 8mon stays very much within our normal operational experience base while Butch and sunny are on board they'll be doing science station maintenance um they'll execute the SpaceX 31 research and cargo Mission and we may have a couple space walks for them towards the end of their expedition um since they've been up there they've been a welcome set of Helping Hands they've already done about a 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board for us looking forward the station team is focused on the planning and the rework for the uh undock the Starliner undock as you heard from Steve that's targeted for early September before we hit that undock window we're going to do the work to reconfigure the create Dragon we'll probably do that within the next week or so to have that in place for a six crew contingency return capability and just to reiterate as Steve said this just gives us a a contingency capability after Starliner departs and before the crew n vehicle arrives uh crew nine with two crew will launch no earlier than September 24th we'll do a normal uh Handover uh between the the crews and then we'll have create undock after that we will relocate the crew n vehicle that Dragon vehicle will be relocated to open up the forward port for the SpaceX 31 cargo Mission and we're planning that mission somewhere in mid October in between all of that we've got a soy use crew exchange that's happening uh September 11th will be the launch of 73s that'll be carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and then Tracy Dyson will go home after that soy's exchange so we've got a lot of uh busy activities in in front of us this fall um on behalf of the station program I do want to thank the entire team the commercial crew program the Boeing team and all of our technical teams they've done a tremendous amount of work over the summer getting us to the point where we have enough data and enough information to make this really critical and difficult decision that we've made today so very much appreciated and uh as I think all of you know commercial crew program is a critical to the success of ISS so we appreciate everything they've done and with that I'll hand it over to Norm Knight thank you Dana I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in our mission and I want to Echo my gratitude for the teams on the ground both Boeing and NASA and our astronauts on board for their tireless work and effort with this test flight over many years especially during the last few months you know with the dedication to or the decision to fly Starliner home UNCW the ground teams will still be fully engaged uring St liner returns safely now while the teams are hard at work here on the ground we also have Butch and sunny living and working 260 mies above our planet they're giving our teams valuable feedback on Starliner they've served as an integral part of our on orbit uh uh increment and they demonstrated patience adaptability flexibility resilience and readiness that's what you get with an American astronaut they've been eager to contribute to important conversations they've asked questions they seamlessly become part of the Expedition 71 crew contributing to the important work on board the International Space Station you know when you're charting New Paths for exploration there are highs and lows we all know this it's part of exploration and moving forward space flight is hard the margins are thin the space environment is not forgiving and we have to be right we all know this this was a tough problem to be solved and a decision had to be made I want you to remember Starliner is a robust vehicle with excellent flying qualities as evidenced by the manual demonstration accomplished by Butch prior to docking and Starliner has performed exceptionally well overall so please don't lose sight of that this is a test flight and the Thruster issue and the associated investigations will pay huge dividends in the future for human exploration in a great way when Starliner flies again I am encouraged by the dedication and resilience both the NASA and Boeing ground teams and of course our space Flyers exhibit I talked with Butch and sunny uh both yesterday and today they support the agency's decision fully and they're ready to continue this mission on board ISS as members of the Expedition 71 crew I would also be remiss not to mention that this decision also affects the crew n Mission and the astronauts that are assigned to fly in that mission uh in September crew n Mission will now configure Dragon for two crew members and will provide seats for Butch and sunny to return we're also working to finalize those crew assignments and update the training plan those decisions will may be made public once they are fin finalized I would again like to thank all the teams who have designed built and now fly Starliner going forward their hard work will continue to pave the path for expanded uh human space flight exploration thanks thanks storm we'll move into the question and answer portion now um we'll open it up again to folks in the room and folks on the phone if you're on the phone press star one to get into the queue please clearly state which of our participants you are addressing in your question and we appreciate appreciate you limiting yourself to one question um so with that yeah in the back Mark stman CBS News uh this could be for Jim or Ken Steve I I I'll let you decide my question is about trust I mean space flight is a business that's built on trust you need trust that everyone's going to do their job you have to have trust in all your space Partners Boeing essentially said trust us we have a spacecraft that is ready to return astronauts home and NASA went in a different direction so how now do you begin to rebuild that relationship of trust with boing mean I'll startor I don't I don't think it's a trust issue at all I don't think we're we're rebuilding trust I think we're looking at the data and we view the data and the uncertainty that's there differently than Boeing does it's not a matter of trust it's our technical expertise and our experience that we have to to balance and and I think Ken said it we balance risk across everything not just the Starliner piece so I I don't see it as a trust issue at all I guess caner well I would say that um we've had a lot of tense discussions right because the the call was close and so people have emotional uh investment in in either option and and that gives you a a a a healthy discourse um but after that you have to do some work to to keep your team together right to keep uh your team uh restored and ready for the next issue and and I'll acknowledge that we have some work to do there um it's pretty natural whenever you've had a a difficult decision to make um but we're aware of it and and we'll work it uh and we're committed to continuing to work with with Boeing uh Steve any anything you want to add yeah I wouldn't necessarily call it trust I would call it a technical disagreement where we get uh a group of Engineers together and they disagree on the risk level of what could potentially happen to the thrusters um Boeing did a great job building a model now we the question is is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew um all the work we've done is really important also for bringing this vehicle back we want the vehicle to come back un cruit it needs to land at the white sand uh space Harbor which is where the opportunities are setting up in September and all the work that we've done both on the NASA and Boeing side give us confidence to bring the vehicle back it has to execute a do over burn it has to do all the things we need it to do undocking from the space station safely so I think together we have worked toward that that part there was just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk and that's kind of where it got down to and I would say you know it it's close it's very close and it just depends on you know how you evaluate the risk we did it a little differently with our crew than Boeing did so and Mark uh trust is a two-way street and it's built uh upon a relationship and I think uh as indicated just an hour ago by the new CEO of Boeing that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future which is very important to NASA that we have two uh human rated vehicles I think uh you should understand the the trust is two ways with ar Technica uh two questions uh one for the administrator just to follow up on that question about Boeing and in your discussion with the Boeing CEO Kelly orberg how do you anticipate that NASA can help Boeing get Starliner operational missions could you maybe fly like a cargo mission to support that or just curious what your thoughts are on that and then for I think Ken Bowers Soxs curious when did you think it was likely that crew dragon be the vehicle to bring the crew home Butch and sunny from the outside it does seem like that you saw something perhaps in the White Sands test data that gave you concern it certainly seem like that's when the odds seem to shift toward Dragon would love any insights on that thank you uh your question to me is best answered by the people that are going to determine the specific uh testing and what is required before the crew would fly yeah I I can take a cut at that that Eric um so we're going to sit down with Boeing and kind of lay out what what's that path right I I would say the White Sands testing uh did give us a surprise uh we saw in that testing as we did you know we did five total simulations with that Thruster of a downhill uh deorbit burn sequence and so that's when we saw this swelling of the poppet on the oxidizer side in other words a piece of Teflon that swells up and it it gets in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the Thruster the way it needs to go into and that's what caused the degradation and thrust when we saw that I think that's when things changed a bit for us in that now we know that's prevalent and where is it prevalent in other thrusters and then what could that swelling do in the future so that's I think where we change course what we have to do now moving forward uh for uh Starliner one is H how do we a avoid firing that Thruster in a manner that would cause the heating that causes that oxidizer popet Teflon piece to swell can we figure out how to do that with some testing um and can we also we also have learned recently that the environment in the dogghouse and I think I've talked about this is hotter than we thought in other words there are when the other thrusters fire in a dogghouse some of that heat soaks back into uh an individual Thruster and that causes the Teflon to swell it also causes some vapor ization of the propellant so is there a way we can figure out how to get the dogghouse cooler overall and then thirdly we see cross talk when the sometimes when an omac the orbital maneuvering engine the big 1500 PB Thruster fires it then causes heat on one of the Adent Thruster so we've got to sit down and go through all those details with Boeing with AET um the teams have been so focused uh over the last couple months at understanding uh the the physics and what's going on which we have a much better understanding that now now that we have that understanding of the physics I think we can move forward and start to find mitigations for future flights see if Ken has anything to add well um for me the uh the white sand results I thought were a gift it was just great to have that data um and I really thought it might help us convert I've seen it uh with a few of our discussions where uh we have people in different camps on a on a risk decision We Gather more data and then a piece of data comes in and we we come together and everybody agrees that we we take one path or the other uh and I I thought we might get there until probably about a week ago I'd say that that that's where it started looking like hey I I just don't think we'll get there in time uh for uh for bringing Starliner home in a in a timely manner uh with more time we might have gotten a lot smarter uh but but we're just at the point where we need to bring Starliner home take all the data we can and and keep moving forward I think next question is from Marsha Don on the phone lines Marsha Don from Associated Press yes hi um for you can I I'm I'd like a little more um information on how the opinions were split um was it 5050 75 to 25% in favor of SpaceX if you could just characterize the numbers for and against and also if you could discuss the mood in the room today thank you um so um um the the uh the polling uh was unanimous amongst all the NASA folks um Boeing expressed the ability to either work crude or un crewed um they believe in their vehicle and and and they'd be willing to bring a crew home on it um we had some NASA folks that uh took a broader view of the um of the the global risks who who thought that hey we probably should keep the crew on the uh on the the test flight um to to say whether that was 15 20% of the people i' I'd have a hard time uh coming up with that number but as far as the mood um all of us really wanted to complete the the test flight with crew and I think uh unanimously we're disappointed not to be able to do that um but that's part of the reason our system is set up the way it is right you don't want that