Don’t book your tickets for the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission next year just yet.
Given the lack of margin, if further issues arise during testing or integration, there will likely be delays to the September 2025 Artemis II launch date.”
Heat shield in limbo NASA also has yet to provide any additional information on the status of its review of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield.
Once the spacecraft landed, engineers found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry damaged the heat shield.
To prepare for the Artemis II launch next September, Artemis officials had previously said they planned to begin stacking operations of the rocket in September of this year.
Wait until next year to purchase your tickets for NASA’s Artemis II mission launch.
For some time now, there have been concerns about the mission’s official launch date of September 2025. This will be the first crewed flight into deep space in over 50 years. The main reason for this is that NASA is still considering the effects of the Artemis I mission’s damage to the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield almost two years ago.
However, it turns out that maintaining this date now presents additional challenges.
absence of a schedule margin.
NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program, which is essentially the office at Kennedy Space Center in Florida that builds ground infrastructure to support the Space Launch System rocket and Orion, is in danger of missing its Artemis II timeline, according to a new report from the US Government Accountability Office.
Reid Wiseman of NASA will lead a crew of four astronauts on this flight as they embark on a 10-day journey to the Moon and back inside Orion. The Orion spacecraft will have a free-return trajectory, which is crucial because it will still return to Earth even if there is a serious issue with the propulsion system. The crew will be within roughly 6,500 miles (10,400 km) of the Moon’s far side surface when they get as close as possible.
According to the new report, which was released Thursday, the Exploration Ground Systems program had several months of schedule margin as it worked toward a launch date of September 2025 at the start of the year. However, all of that margin has now been devoted to technical problems encountered during pad testing and rocket mobile launcher development.
According to the report, “the program was setting aside that time earlier in 2024 for technical issues that may arise during testing of the integrated SLS and Orion vehicle or if weather interferes with planned activities, among other things.”. Since this is the first time testing many of these systems, officials stated that problems are likely to occur. Because of the limited margin, there will probably be delays to the September 2025 Artemis II launch date if additional problems occur during testing or integration. “.
It kind of blows your mind. Indeed, since the launch of Artemis I in late 2022, the ground systems program has had to finish some significant tasks, such as developing an astronaut emergency egress system in case of an issue during the countdown to blastoff. However, the agency will have had more than three years to work on those and other accommodations by September of next year. The schedule now has no margin left.
limbo heat shield.
The status of NASA’s review of the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft has also not been disclosed. Chunks of charred material chipped and cracked away from Orion’s heat shield during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere during the Artemis I mission, which launched Orion past the Moon in late 2022. After the spacecraft touched down, engineers discovered over 100 places where the heat shield was harmed by the stresses of reentry.
The space agency must make a crucial decision on whether to fly the heat shield as is or modify it, as Ars reported in September.
Although NASA has not made any public statements regarding these findings or its future decision, an independent review team has finished evaluating the agency’s work on the heat shield. NASA has not yet made a decision on whether to take corrective action, an agency spokesperson said in response to inquiries from Ars this week. “The Artemis I heat shield investigation process is still underway,” the spokesperson said. “,”.
Artemis officials had previously stated that they intended to start stacking operations of the rocket in September of this year in order to get ready for the Artemis II launch next September. However, this activity has been put on hold until the heat shield issue has been resolved. “We are still tracking toward stacking beginning this fall,” the space agency official responded when asked when NASA now intends to begin stacking operations. “,”.
In summary, NASA has several schedule issues for the Artemis II mission. It is unlikely that a launch delay will be announced anytime soon, but we can be pretty sure that it will happen eventually.
