In less than two weeks, NASA is scheduled to launch its Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed journey to the Moon in over half a century. The Space Launch Rocket has already been rolled out to the launch pad, setting the stage for a historic mission.
While the crew won’t be attempting to land on the lunar surface this time around — that milestone is reserved for Artemis 3 — it’s an extremely ambitious and highly complex mission.
And as CNN reports, some experts aren’t convinced of NASA’s reassurances that the Orion spacecraft that will carry the astronauts is safe to use.
Specifically, NASA has spent years since its successful uncrewed Artemis 1 mission studying how the extreme temperatures during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere affect Orion’s heat shield.
The Orion capsule sustained major damage after making its return in 2022. It cracked and chipped as a result of the extreme conditions during reentry.
Over two years after the mission concluded, NASA said it had identified the root cause, with engineers determining that the “gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected.”
“This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations,” the agency wrote in a December 2024 statement.
Yet instead of making major material changes to the heat shield itself after the fact — the Artemis 2 heat shield was assembled and installed even before the Artemis 1 mission — NASA opted to adjust the Artemis 2 mission’s flight path instead, to ensure a gentler reentry.
“Based on the data, we have decided — NASA unanimously and our decision-makers — to move forward with the current Artemis II Orion capsule and heat shield, with a modified entry trajectory,” former NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced at the time.
But not everybody is convinced that the space agency has sufficiently addressed the issue ahead of its first crewed Moon mission.
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