When NASA first awarded contracts to provide transportation for its Commercial Crew Program to SpaceX and Boeing (BA) in 2014, the latter was considered the safe entity. A legacy aerospace company, Boeing had, in many ways, built the foundation for the US space program over the course of decades.

However, on Thursday, Elon Musk’s firm will be tasked with completing a mission Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft could not. NASA and SpaceX plan to return NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station back to Earth on board the Crew Dragon spacecraft eight months after the initial return date.

The role reversal highlights SpaceX’s growing lead over Boeing in a commercial space industry increasingly driven by newcomers bringing a tech startup-like mentality to space exploration. Twelve years after the US retired The Space Shuttle program, SpaceX is on track to launch its 15th crewed mission, while Boeing has failed to complete one.

“We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important assured crew access to the ISS,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said last month, in announcing the agency’s decision to forego the astronauts’ return on board the Boeing spacecraft.

Publicly, Nelson has maintained his confidence in the company, saying he has “100%” faith in the return of the Starliner, given NASA’s “extensive cooperative working relationship” with Boeing.

That has done little to quiet speculation around the future of Boeing’s space program at a time when the company faces a multitude of challenges in its core commercial plane business, stemming from fatal crashes that have only amplified fears that the firm has strayed from its strong engineering foundation.

"You have a balance sheet that’s been weakened," Bank of America aerospace research analyst Ron Epstein said in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, highlighting the need for a culture change. "You have customers that aren’t happy. They’re being investigated by multiple government entities. It’s a heavy lift."

That was before 33,000 union machinists went on strike, halting production of Boeing’s jets and prompting the company to furlough tens of thousands of workers to conserve cash.

Space programs remain a small part of Boeing’s business, but the division that once posted strong profits and steady revenue has started to falter in recent years. Since 2022, Boeing’s defense and space division lost $6 billion, according to the AP, dragged down by fixed price contracts for NASA and the Pentagon.

The Starliner program alone has lost $1.6 billion. That’s separate from the $4.2 billion fixed-price contract NASA awarded Boeing to build the vehicle back in 2014.

In the meantime, SpaceX has continued to exert its dominance, honing a playbook built on moving faster and scaling bigger while drastically reducing costs. The company is now aiming to complete 148 launches by the end of 2024, although more than half of those are tied directly to the company’s Starlink satellites.

On Sept. 15, its Crew Dragon capsule ferried four civilian astronauts to successfully carry out the first commercial spacewalk by the Polaris Dawn crew.

But SpaceX hasn’t been without its own controversies. Just last week, the Federal Aviation Administration proposed a $633,000 fine against Musk, alleging the company failed to follow license requirements and failed to seek approval for changes to two launches in 2023.

Musk pushed back on the proposed fine in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying SpaceX would sue the FAA for "regulatory overreach."

The Crew Dragon is set to dock at the ISS for six months, where US Space Force Commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will join Williams and Wilmore to conduct scientific research. The Crew-9 mission is set to return in February 2025. If successful, it would mark SpaceX’s ninth crewed mission for NASA.

Following NASA’s announcement of the SpaceX rescue mission, Nelson reiterated the challenges of space exploration.

“Space flight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine,” he said.

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