NASA on Thursday announced it has formally classified the 2024 crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft as a “Type A” mishap, an acknowledgement that the test flight was a serious failure. As part of the announcement, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sent an agency-wide letter that recognized the shortcomings of both Starliner’s developer, Boeing, as well as the space agency itself. Starliner flew under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in which the agency procures astronaut transportation services to the International Space Station. “We are taking ownership of our shortcomings,” Isaacman said. The letter and a subsequent news conference on Thursday afternoon were remarkable for the amount of accountability taken by NASA. Moreover, at Isaacman’s direction, the space agency released an internal report, comprising 311 pages, that details findings from the Program Investigation Team that looked into the Starliner flight. “Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware,” Isaacman wrote in his letter to the NASA workforce. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.” Isaacman said there would be “leadership accountability” as a result of the decisions surrounding the Starliner program, but did not say which actions would be taken. “An outstanding day” The “Type A” classification of Starliner comes more than a year and a half after the vehicle’s ill-fated, initial crewed flight in early June 2024. During the more than daylong journey to the space station after launching on an Atlas V rocket, Starliner was beset by helium leaks in its propulsion system and then intermittent thruster failures.