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Boeing is still in the doghouse with NASA. Their relationship has been under mounting strain for the past two years, and now, NASA is apparently canceling a major component of Boeing’s $3.2 billion SLS Stages Production and Evolution Contract—a deal designed to secure the future of the agency’s Moon rocket.
NASA awarded Boeing the contract in 2022, tapping the company to produce Space Launch System (SLS) core stages for Artemis 3 and 4, procure critical and long-lead material for the Artemis 5 and 6 core stages, and produce Exploration Upper Stages (EUS) for Artemis 5 and 6. But on Tuesday, the agency said it would no longer use Boeing’s EUS due to major developmental delays. Not to mention the fact that the EUS is also drastically over budget.
Unnamed sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that NASA instead intends to select United Launch Alliance—a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin—to provide the upper stages for future SLS missions. While Boeing’s partial ownership of ULA would mitigate its losses, the switch would still deliver a significant financial blow to the company, as it will have to share revenue with Lockheed.
Gizmodo was not able to independently verify these claims, and neither Boeing, ULA, nor NASA responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.
The EUS was supposed to be a core component of the next-generation SLS rocket, SLS Block 1B, before NASA cancelled the upgrade as part of its Artemis program revamp. The new upper stage would have been more powerful, equipped with larger fuel tanks and four RL10 engines to help NASA send crew and cargo to the Moon during the latter half of the Artemis program.
In August 2024, a report by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General found that the cost of developing SLS Block 1B was on track to reach $5.7 billion before the system’s first planned launch in 2028. That would be $700 million over budget. More than half the cost stemmed from EUS development, which had ballooned from an estimated $982 million in 2017 to a projected $2.8 billion by 2028.
The report also stated that completion of EUS had been pushed from 2021 to 2027, which could delay Artemis 4. At the time, the mission was set to launch in September 2028.
NASA’s recent decision to overhaul the Artemis program architecture was partly spurred by these problems. The agency has canceled SLS Block 1B and will instead keep the rocket’s current configuration to allow for a faster flight rate, which means it no longer requires Boeing’s EUS. According to Bloomberg, NASA may use the upper portion of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket—called Centaur V—as the upper stage for Artemis 4, which will now be the first Artemis mission to land astronauts on the Moon.
Considering the cascading impact Boeing’s delays and cost overruns could have on the Artemis program, it’s easy to understand why NASA would change course, but the switchup couldn’t have come at a worse time for Boeing.
The company is mired in scrutiny following an investigation into the Starliner incident, which left two NASA astronauts stuck on the International Space Station for nine months. While NASA’s leadership took much of the blame, the investigation uncovered evidence to suggest that Boeing failed to provide sufficient testing and verification data and resolve anomalies following uncrewed test flights.
NASA said it is committed to working with Boeing to get the Starliner spacecraft back on track, but the cancellation of EUS shows that the company’s issues extend beyond its commercial crew contract. Boeing has much work to do to rebuild trust with NASA and establish itself as a reliable strategic partner.
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Source: Gizmodo