The move comes as Boeing tries to course correct under new CEO Robert “Kelly” Ortberg.
“At this critical juncture, our priority is to restore the trust of our customers and meet the high standards they expect of us to enable their critical missions around the world,” Ortberg wrote in an email to employees announcing one of his first major changes since taking over as CEO of Boeing on 8 August.
“Working together, we can and will improve our performance and ensure we deliver on our commitments.”
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Boeing’s space operations have seen an embarrassing setback recently with the stranding of a group of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) following technical issues with the thrusters on the company’s Starliner spacecraft.
The astronauts, who arrived at the ISS in June, were meant to stay for a week but will end up returning in February, eight months after lift-off, on a spacecraft operated by rival SpaceX.
However, the exit of Colbert comes despite Starliner returning to Earth uncrewed safely earlier this month, in what many saw as a huge vindication for the company.
Crucially, NASA reported no issues with its manoeuvres, with all 27 working thrusters performing as expected and the spacecraft following a “perfect trajectory” home.
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Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, even hinted the spacecraft could still have a future despite its technical problems, declaring the “important” test flight would set up “future missions”.
“From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it,” he said.
“We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni [the astronauts] on board.
“Depending who you are on the team, there’s different emotions associated with that and I think it’s going to take a little time to work through that for me, a little bit and for everybody else on the Boeing and NASA team.”
Despite the positive return, Boeing executives later failed to attend the post-landing press conference.
Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s space operations, said the aerospace giant had simply “deferred to NASA to represent the mission”.
Meanwhile, Boeing has chalked up a loss in the second quarter of the calendar year 2024 despite US$16.9 billion in revenue.
Its commercial airplanes division lost US$715 million for the quarter and defence, space and security lost $913 million, while global services made an $870 million profit.
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