The moon moves a bit too far for NASA, which has postponed the Artemis II and III missions.

To say that when Artemis I flew in November 2022, we expected to see a crew return to the Moon in the fall or winter of 2024… would be an understatement to say that these Artemis missions are repeated over and over again. There must have been a delay. Yesterday, the suspended NASA boss Bill Nelson made two important announcements on this subject.

• Postponing the Artemis II mission with a previously known crew of four astronauts (Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover and Reed Wiseman), who would have to perform a lunar flyby in the fall of 2026 under Apollo 8-like conditions. .
• Postponing the Artemis III mission until mid-2027 (at least), specifically allowing the starship HLS to be ready so that the crew can finally land on the lunar regolith.

The Orion capsule and its crack problems

As early as January 2023, we knew that the Orion spacecraft, the spacecraft responsible for accommodating the crew, developed in part by the European Space Agency (ESA), would be decommissioned after the unmanned Artemis I mission. Expected loss was incurred. Ground, his thermal shield had exploded rather than melted, and very unevenly at that.

Now we know what happened: During re-entry at high speed, the resulting capsule bounces off the dense layer of our atmosphere, as incredible as it sounds! It is these rebounds that unevenly damage the heat shield and cause the unexpected sublimation reaction of the substance, AVCOAT. The superheated atmosphere caused by the friction actually reached a temperature of 2800°C, and during the rebounds, a pocket of gas formed inside the shield, causing this type of damage:

Even if the temperature inside the capsule remains nominal, so without danger to potential astronauts, NASA doesn’t want to take any risks. The memory of the horrific death of the first crew of Apollo 1 is very fresh in everyone’s mind. In fact, during a typical ground test, the pure oxygen inside the Apollo capsule ignited and the three astronauts burned to death. Fortunately, we are far from that kind of problem.

NASA officials thus announced that the atmospheric re-entry speed, with its famous bounce, would be revised, which would have the effect of bringing Orion’s reentry into the Pacific Ocean closer to San Diego.

And in all this Artemis III?

Artemis III is the major mission that led to the return of humans to the lunar surface decades after the Apollo program. The mission is therefore much more complex, as it requires the support of the Starship HLS to land and land on the Moon. However, the latter is not yet ready, far from it. Artemis III also requires resupply by multiple starships in Earth orbit, as can be seen in this infographic.

These supplies, which we’ve mentioned often, are one of the critical points of the mission and the development of the Starship HLS, which is not currently a tested version by SpaceX, will take time. NASA therefore does not plan the mission before mid-2027, but another delay is still possible.

The political and strategic goal is to prevent China and its lunar space program from first reaching the South Pole, which is suspected of harboring water ice. The US under Donald Trump will want to remain the leader in this race, knowing that China has announced that it is targeting 2030 and is accelerating its aerospace projects.

However, we can imagine that these new delays will be arguments used by Elon Musk to bring SpaceX further into Artemis. And no doubt his friend Jared Isaacman, recently appointed NASA administrator, will back him up.

Sources:
Space News: NASA delays Artemis 2 moon mission to 2026, Artemis 3 astronaut landing to mid-2027
Cité de l’espace: The Orion capsule Artemis I mission was worse than expected