Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, extended his support to Boeing Co BA, the struggling aerospace giant.
SpaceX provided its knowledge of crewed parachute systems to Boeing and we are happy to be helpful in any other ways, said SpaceX CEO Eric Berger.
On Wednesday, Boeing said that NASA's commercial crew program had recorded a loss of $257 million due to the delay in Starliner's launch, which will be paid by Boeing. The total overrun costs of Starliner amount to $1.5 billion, bringing the total cost of its production to about $1.5 billion.
The Starliner was planning to launch in July with two astronauts onboard, but was delayed indefinitely due to a supplier flagging an issue with the parachute. Boeing said it requires time to conduct additional testing on its parachutes to enable a safe flight for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
The creation of parachutes for orbital spacecraft is much harder than it appears to be. SpaceX was facing a major challenge, he said in a statement.
In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing $4.2 billion in a fixed-price contract to develop the Starliner, part of its commercial crew program. The SpaceX contract was also awarded to Musk for about $2.6 billion.
The same day, SpaceX is preparing to complete all its originally contracted missions and has even been awarded additional flights by NASA. The spacecraft manufacturer commemorated the third anniversary of its first crewed spaceflight, known as the SpaceX Demo - 2 mission, conducted earlier this year under NASA's program.