NASA ditches Boeing for SpaceX in astronaut rescue

NASA announced it will now call on SpaceX to bring back two astronauts in 2025 who are currently stuck at the International Space Station (ISS). Boeing's (BA) Starliner spacecraft will be returning empty, putting downward pressure on the aircraft manufacturer's stock in Monday's pre-market trading.

Morning Brief anchors Seana Smith and Brad Smith break down the details.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

Let's get to some trending tickers that we're watching this morning.

We're starting with shares of Boeing falling after NASA announced it will turn to SpaceX to bring back two astronauts from the International Space Station.

The ISS and that will not happen for another six months shares of Boeing right now, they are down by about 1%.

We've been tracking any developments around this as we've been getting news from and updates from NASA and trying to figure out ultimately what it's going to take, especially considering this was supposed to be a shorter mission for a kind of quick check in.

Uh and, and ultimately has turned into something more largely here for Boeing that is led them to potentially, well, not lose the business of NASA.

All out.

There are several different contracts.

However, uh this is not a vote of confidence, at least at this juncture.

It certainly not.

And I think that this is almost humiliating to use that word here for Boeing because of the fact that NASA is now turning to SpaceX, I obviously have more trust there, at least when it comes to this juncture and exactly the mission that they're trying to accomplish, bringing the astronauts back home.

So, so this brings up a couple of questions and this was raised in analysts uh reaction notes here this morning and much of that uh revolves around the fact of what exactly does the feature of the starliner program look like under the new CEO.

It's going to be an issue that needs to be tackled here uh relatively soon.

And analyst at JP Morgan saying in a note here this morning that, that this decision could quote result in further street starliner losses here for Boeing.

And when you take this into account and why we're all we are discussing this this morning is the stock is off another 1% and this is just the latest in a long line of issues challenges that Boeing has faced over the last several months.

This is a stock that has lost about a third of its value since the start of the year.

So another had one another challenge here for Boeing and obviously investors a bit concerned about what exactly the future holds for the starliner program and maybe more broadly what this means for the future of Boeing here in space.