Less than a year After announcing major delays for the next two Artemis moon missions, NASA executives said Thursday that expected flight dates are shifting again, with the first pilot trip around the moon now expected in April 2026, and the first moon landing in mid-2027.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the delays are necessary to revise the Orion crew capsule’s return trajectory to reduce stress and prevent the kind of unexpected heat shield damage seen after an unmanned test flight in 2022 — and to allow for extensive testing of the capsule environmental monitoring and control. life support systems.
The heat shield used by the unmanned Artemis 1 Orion capsule shows pitting where charred pieces broke loose during re-entry. Charring was expected, but the material had to be left in place to provide insulation. The pilot Artemis 2 mission is postponed, in part to implement a new return trajectory to reduce warming. /Credit: NASA
“Based on the data, we have unanimously decided to move forward with the current Artemis 2/Orion capsule and heat shield with a modified access path… to reduce heat returning to Earth’s atmosphere,” Nelson said.
“In addition, we must complete our updates to the Orion environmental controls and life support systems identified earlier this year.”
Future heat shields for the Artemis 3 moon landing mission and subsequent flights will use essentially the same materials, but with modifications to improve their performance during reentry.
In the meantime, Nelson said: “We plan to launch Artemis 2 on April 26 and we, together with our commercial partners, are going to do everything in our power to launch sooner.”
The Artemis program aims to send astronauts to the moon Antarctica where ice deposits could one day allow crews to extract oxygen and hydrogen to produce air, water and rocket fuels that don’t have to be transported from Earth at great expense.
After the launch of Artemis 2, Nelson said NASA is “going to make (any) adjustments that are necessary, and we plan to launch Artemis 3, the first landing on the moon in more than half a century. Assuming SpaceX lander is ready, we plan to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027. That will be well before the Chinese government’s announced intention (to send taikonauts to the moon in 2030). this Artemis must have 2 test flights to ensure the success of our return to the moon.”
NASA launched the first test flight of the Artemis program, Artemis 1, in November 2022, using the agency’s new Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket to carry an unmanned, Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule on a loop flight around the moon and back.
NASA planned to launch the Artemis 2 mission late this year to carry a crew of three men and one woman around the moon to thoroughly test the spacecraft’s life support, propulsion and other systems.
The unmanned Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will pass by the moon on its first test flight in 2022. /Credit: NASA
But after the Artemis 1 flightengineers discovered that the Orion capsule’s 15-foot-wide heat shield suffered unexpected damage during the rapid return from the moon using a technique called “skip entry.”
In a skip entry, the capsule dives into the atmosphere, slows down and rises again before falling back into the atmosphere for the final descent. The idea is similar to how a flat rock can jump over a still pond. Skipping inputs offers a number of benefits, including a wider range of splashdown targets.
The Orion heat shield is designed to ablate or char during re-entry when the spacecraft enters Earth’s atmosphere at speeds exceeding 40,000 km per hour. But the charred material is meant to stay in place and form an insulating layer. During Artemis 1’s return, more charred material separated from the heat shield than computer models had predicted.
Although the unexpected “liberation” had no impact on the spacecraft — NASA said astronauts wouldn’t have even noticed if anyone had been on board — engineers wanted to make sure they understood the underlying cause so they could update computer models to accurately predict the re-entry effects. over several routes.
After hundreds of tests and extensive technical analysis, NASA “has since determined that as the capsule dived in and out of the atmosphere as part of the planned skip entry, heat built up in the outer layer of the heat shield,” said Pam Melroy, a of the researchers. former shuttle commander and now deputy administrator of NASA.
That heat buildup led to “gases forming and becoming trapped in the heat shield,” she said. “This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer.”
While the same type of heat shield will be used for the Artemis 2 mission in April 2026, the crew will use a modified re-entry trajectory to reduce the type of heating that damaged the Artemis 1 heat shield.
An artist’s impression of SpaceX’s lunar lander, a variant of the company’s Starship rocket, on the moon’s surface. /Credit: NASA
As for the Artemis 3 lunar landing flight, the new target launch date assumes mid-2027 for SpaceX’s lunar lander, a variant of the upper stage used by the SpaceX lunar lander. new Super Heavy-Starship rocketcompletes multiple test flights in orbit, along with at least one unmanned lunar landing.
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he selected billionaire Jared Isaacman, a space veteran with strong ties to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, to serve as NASA’s next administrator.
During Thursday’s press conference, Nelson was asked if he was concerned that the next administration could make major changes to the Artemis program given SpaceX’s development of the new Super Heavy-Starship rocket.
“First of all, there is one human-rated spacecraft that is flying and has already flown past the moon, and that is the SLS (Space Launch System) in conjunction with Orion,” Nelson said. “Second, this is a partnership. It is a commercial partnership. It is an international partnership.
“I think what’s going to happen over time is you’re going to have a number of years where the partners are flying with NASA, and then the technologies that are developed later will determine what’s going to happen.” be the system that flies.”
He concluded by saying, “I don’t see the concern that your question raises, although it is a legitimate question, that Starship is suddenly going to take over everything.”
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