Initially slated for liftoff in November, Artemis 2 now eyes a September 2025 launch date, while the Artemis 3 mission is rescheduled from 2025 to September 2026.
In a news conference Tuesday, NASA officials cited safety as their top priority and highlighted several concerns that need to be addressed before an Artemis 2 launch — including challenges with the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft, the life support system and the abort system.
Orion’s heat shield
As the only spacecraft that can perform deep space flight and return to Earth at high speeds, the Orion will serve as home base for astronauts aboard Artemis 2 during their 685,000 mile, nearly 10-day journey to the moon.
According to NASA, Orion’s cabin offers a living space of 330 cubic feet, providing the crew with an area about the size of two minivans and 60% more room than the Apollo command module.
Upon reentry, as the astronauts journey back to Earth, temperatures outside the capsule can reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion’s heat shield is built to absorb most of that heat and its ablative design is meant to cause some material to burn away as it heats up during flight.
However, following the largely successful unmanned Artemis 1 mission in December 2022, an inspection of the craft revealed that more “charred material” was released from the shield than expected. While more time is needed to analyze the data, NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free told reporters, “We have an extensive investigation into the root cause of that issue — and it’s going very, very well.”
Artemis 3 life support system
Carbon dioxide scrubbers are vitally important in space because they remove CO2 from the air and allow astronauts to breathe. Free said that after NASA received some life support components for Artemis 3, they found a failure within the motor valve circuitry that could affect the scrubber.
“When we examined it, we recognized that there was a design flaw in the circuit,” Free said. “Those valve electronics affect many parts of the life support system on the spacecraft, in particular, the CO2 scrubbing system.”
Free said it was very clear it was unacceptable to accept the flawed hardware and that it would need to be replaced in order to guarantee the safety of the crew.
“And we’re committed to doing that — we know how to fix it,” Free said. “We just need to make sure we take the time to do it according to the workmanship standards that we expect for a human rated vehicle.”
The Launch Abort System
In the event of a loss of control, the Orion must be able to safely separate from the launch vehicle. NASA’s Launch Abort System serves as a safeguard for astronauts in case issues arise during the launch or ascent phase. During testing, Free said they found “some deficiencies in the performance of the electrical system — in particular, some of the batteries.”
“We’re still very early in that investigation,” Free said. “We have not yet developed a forward path, but we have multiple parallel options to fix this issue.”
Spacesuits and the SpaceX Starship lunar lander
While Artemis 2 will take astronauts on a journey around the moon, Artemis 3 will deliver them right to the surface — and that requires the Starship lunar lander developed by SpaceX — and of course, spacesuits.
SpaceX already has endured two failures with Starship test flights. In November, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a reportcalling NASA’s 2025 timeline for an Artemis 3 launch “unrealistic,” citing a significant amount of technical work yet to be completed by SpaceX — in addition to “design challenges” with the current spacesuits, which do not currently provide the minimum amount of emergency life support needed for the mission.
“We have a lot of testing to do in front of us, but we wanted to make sure we give ourselves the time to do that,” Free said. “And as we mentioned before, continuing our analysis of crew safety is going to drive our decision making.”
Echoing the sentiments of exploration’s inherent difficulty, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters to think back over 60 years ago when former President John Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon … and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
“Artemis represents what we can accomplish as a country and as a global coalition,” Nelson said, “What we can accomplish when we set our sights on what is hard — and what has never been done before.”
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