NASA faults Boeing for ‘critical software defects’ in Starliner

Bloomberg

NASA is reviewing Boeing Co’s software engineering, and it doesn’t like what it sees.
Lurking behind 1 million lines of code for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft lies a deficient development process that led to two software flaws during a failed test flight, the US space agency said.
The “critical software defects” — either of which could have caused the uncrewed Starliner’s destruction — prompted NASA to open a broad review of Boeing’s quality control.
“The two software issues you all know about are indicators of the software problems but they are likely only symptoms, they are not the real problem,” said Doug Loverro, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s associate administrator overseeing human spaceflight.
The assessment further pressures Boeing as it tries to show NASA it can fly people safely into space. The aerospace giant, already reeling from a deep crisis because of crashes of its 737 Max jetliner, is one of two contractors hired by NASA to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. The other, Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp, completed an uncrewed test flight in March and aims to fly astronauts soon.
Boeing’s coding skills have been under intense scrutiny because of software implicated in two Max crashes that killed 346 people. NASA officials conceded that the high-profile problems of Boeing’s best-selling jet suggested the need for a broader look into the company’s culture — and why systems designed to find coding faults had failed.
The errors “could have led to risk of spacecraft loss,” NASA said, though engineers were able to compensate
during the test flight and return the vehicle back to Earth undamaged.
The space agency and Boeing are now verifying all past programming work on the vehicle. Boeing also plans to check all software that controls the Starliner’s flight, company officials said at a news conference.
Boeing’s problems cast a negative light on NASA’s oversight of contractors, the agency acknowledged. That could complicate efforts to land humans on the moon with systems that NASA purchases from the private sector.
“Our NASA oversight was insufficient” of the Starliner software, Loverro said.