What happened
For the second day in a row, Boeing (BA 1.08%) stock moved higher on Thursday -- this time on some good news from space:
Starliner has landed -- and Boeing stock is up 5% (as of 3:35 p.m. ET).
Image source: NASA.
So what
As you'll recall, it's been two years since Boeing's ill-starred first attempt to launch its CST-100 Starliner to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) in an uncrewed flight. Six days ago, however, Boeing took a do-over and relaunched Starliner atop an Atlas V rocket, aiming to reach the target that eluded it the first time around.
Long story short: Despite multiple mishaps en route, Starliner successfully docked with ISS last Friday. And last night, Boeing brought the space capsule safely back to Earth where it parachuted to a successful landing back at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 6:49 p.m. ET.
Now what
Next up: Boeing will want to review the test flight data, figure out all the things that didn't go 100% right, and fix them. Then, Boeing will make a second test flight -- probably before this year is through -- and this time it will be carrying astronauts on board.
Once that flight is concluded, Starliner can be certified for operational human spaceflight, and for the first time since the Space Shuttle was grounded, it will be safe to consider Boeing a full-fledged space stock once again, capable not just of launching hunks of satellite into orbit but humans as well.
It still remains to be seen whether Boeing can match the prices of SpaceX. And of course, SpaceX has more than a two-year lead over Boeing now, having completed its own first unmanned test flight of Crew Dragon ("Demo-1") back in March 2019 and its first crewed launch ("Demo-2") in May 2020, and begun "operational" flights with its Crew-1 launch in November 2020. But given the financial benefits to NASA of keeping two competing providers in the race (so that they can bid against each other and keep prices down), I'd say Boeing is in this race to stay. Any worries that it might be forced to bow out have now been erased.
That makes today a great day to own Boeing stock.
