Boeing Starliner uncrewed test flight anomalies
The capsule failed to reach the ISS on its first orbital flight test and had to be deorbited early; a second software bug found afterward could have caused a fatal collision between capsule sections.
The damage was public. The root cause was preventable.
The capsule failed to reach the ISS on its first orbital flight test and had to be deorbited early; a second software bug found afterward could have caused a fatal collision between capsule sections.
What the software actually got wrong
A mission elapsed timer software error caused unplanned thruster firings that burned excess fuel, and a separate valve-mapping software defect was found only after the flight in a post-incident code review.
A mission elapsed timer software error caused unplanned thruster...
A mission elapsed timer software error caused unplanned thruster firings that burned excess fuel
Requs AI Edge Case flags this exact pattern at the requirements and architecture stage — before a single line of code implementing it exists — so the assumption behind it gets challenged while it is still cheap to fix.
A separate valve-mapping software defect was found only after...
a separate valve-mapping software defect was found only after the flight in a post-incident code review
Requs AI Software FMEA traces this failure mode back to the system-level hazard it feeds, tagging it against the Common Defect Enumeration so it surfaces in review instead of in the field.
Beyond code coverage and "shall" testing
Root causes like this one rarely show up in code coverage or requirements-compliance testing, because nobody wrote a requirement anticipating the specific edge case that broke. Requs AI Edge Case and Requs AI Software FMEA are built to surface exactly this class of overlooked failure mode — before the software is written.
Surfaces this before code exists
Identifies edge cases like this one at requirements and architecture time, using the Common Defect Enumeration to catalog failure patterns seen across hundreds of real-world software failures — including this one.
Connects the failure mode to the hazard
Traces this class of root cause directly to the system-level hazard it can produce, so a defect pattern like this one gets flagged during design review instead of after it ships.
Find the overlooked root causes before they ship.
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