If you're developing a new type of space mission, you have to wait.
That was the message from three Artemis 2 astronauts who are now expected to fly to the moon no earlier than September 2025, about a year later than originally expected. On a previous unmanned mission, Artemis 1, the Orion spacecraft's heat shield was unexpectedly eroded during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. That was one of the main reasons behind a change to the Artemis 2 schedule in January, although the issue has been worked on since Orion's landing in December 2022.
The comments from the moon crew here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) were particularly appropriate; their interviews in early May came days before Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, aimed at its first-ever mission with astronauts, was also postponed until at least Tuesday (May 21) due to a valve problem with the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. (This news comes after Starliner's launch to the International Space Station was modified several years after numerous technical problems, requiring an additional test mission without astronauts and other modifications.)
Artemis 2 mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency therefore urged everyone watching these missions to adjust their expectations. "If you just try to simplify a program to 'it launches on a certain date that you initially set as a goal, you can feel like you're continually failing,'" says Hansen.
Related: NASA Inspector General finds problems with Orion's heat shield 'pose significant risks' to the safety of the Artemis 2 crew
While NASA's launch dates are as realistic as possible, Hansen says he sees delays going "completely the other way." (Notably, Hansen has not yet flown in space since his selection as an astronaut in 2009, largely because CSA space seats typically occur once every five or six years due to the agency's modest funding compared to other agencies.)
For Hansen, delays have a silver lining: "If you can identify a problem without killing anyone, that's a huge success. And if you can then identify ways to address it, learn from it, and solve it on the spot, even better.
"Ultimately," he continued, "I think it's also important to recognize that we can never reduce this risk to zero. We will learn everything we can in our testing facilities, and [in what] science can achieve in the field. And in the end, we will still have an unknown risk that we will have to accept. But that's part of space exploration."
In addition to Hansen, the Artemis 2 astronauts are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, or LEO), and NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman which goes beyond LEO). Hansen becomes the first non-American after LEO. They were assigned to the mission in April 2023.
The heat shield discussion made headlines again this month after NASA's Office of the Inspector General (IG) issued a report saying the ablation problems pose "significant risks" to Artemis 2's safety. NASA has found more than 100 areas on Orion's heat shield with unexpected erosion, according to the IG.
"With the recent IG report, the heat shield is getting a lot of attention. But that's already happened; this is not new," Glover told Space.com in a separate KSC interview. "The IG report seems like a big deal to some people, but we talked about that [the heat shield] as one of our main problems since the landing of Artemis 1, almost."
Glover emphasized that when people sympathize with him about a mission "delay," he sees the better terminology as a "correction" because "the system had to correct itself" to allow for a safer launch. The crew, he emphasized, was not surprised and did not see the change in timeline as "negative."
Related: NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft succeeded in a lunar mission despite a heat shield problem
"It takes the pressure off time while we analyze the heat shield and repair the mobile launcher," said Glover, a former U.S. Navy test pilot; the powerful launch of Artemis 1 caused some damage to the mobile launch vehicle. Other issues, such as foam cracking on the core of the Artemis 1's Space Launch System rocket, will also be scrutinized, he said.
Related: Massive Artemis 1 moon rocket blew the doors off NASA's launch tower elevators (video)
The training also continues as Artemis 2 aims to "be the vanguard, the vanguard, find a path" for future lunar missions afterward, Glover said. The next eighteen months will be full of what he calls the "three Ts": training, testing and talking (or public engagement). He emphasized that the heat shield is being tested around the world, along with NASA, the Department of Defense and other places.
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Wiseman, also a former U.S. Navy test pilot, told Space.com in his own KSC interview that development programs should not have schedules as their primary goal. "The whole point of the development program, if you take everything else away, is to get flying," he said.
"When you build a new vehicle, it doesn't matter how many requirements you set and how many qualification programs you set up. When human hands try to assemble an incredibly complex and powerful machine, it will manifest itself in a number of problems. And there will be things you learn as you go all the way up to launch," he added.
Problems are solved, Wiseman points out, "after a few vehicles fly, because you start shaking those things out." But I would also say that in space travel there is no such thing as routine. I think we've learned that throughout. of history There will be a curveball every now and then that you have to address, solve, fix and integrate."
