Scrutinizing SpaceX, NASA Overlooked Some Boeing Software Problems

After a couple of rounds of investigation and some soul-searching, NASA and Boeing believe that they have identified what went wrong during a troubled test flight of an uncrewed Boeing spacecraft designed to carry NASA astronauts.

In addition to the software errors that slipped through undetected and were not fixed before the spacecraft was launched in December, NASA officials admitted that decades of working with Boeing gave them a level of trust. As a result, it might not have been paying attention to the company as closely as it should have while it was also placing more scrutiny on SpaceX, which also built a capsule for carrying people to the space station.

“We were, I would say, a little more used to the Boeing process,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said during a news conference on Tuesday. “It’s one that we have used in the past on successful NASA programs like space shuttle and the International Space Station.”

Instead of building and operating its own spacecraft to take astronauts to space as it has in the past, NASA has hired two private companies — Boeing and SpaceX, the aerospace newcomer started by Elon Musk — to provide transportation to and from the International Space Station.

“We may have been focused a little more on SpaceX because they use a bit of a nontraditional approach to their software development,” Mr. Stich said. “And so we may have had a few more people looking at that.”

Last month, SpaceX successfully launched two NASA astronauts, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, to the space station in its Crew Dragon capsule. The two astronauts are in orbit working on experiments and maintenance of the space station and will attempt a return trip in the SpaceX vessel later this year.