Artemis II Delayed. Again.

by Sam Atkins

NASA’s Artemis II mission, which will send the first humans to orbit around the moon in over fifty years, is now set to launch in April 2026 and Artemis III, which will actually put humans on the lunar surface, is targeting a mid-2027 launch window. Announced earlier this month, this is the latest in a series of delays over safety concerns regarding the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. As disappointing as these delays have been, the safety of astronauts should be paramount and all precautions should be taken.

The issue was first discovered after the Artemis I uncrewed flight in late 2022. Launched atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the Orion spacecraft went all the way out to perform a few flybys of the Moon before returning to Earth safely. However, upon inspection of the recovered capsule, it was found that an unexpected amount of material had been stripped from the heat shield during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. These maneuvers are done at incredible speeds where the spacecraft is essentially slamming into the gasses that make up the atmosphere. This creates incredible pressure at the impacting side of the craft and heats up the air and the craft to thousands of degrees. The heat shield is specially designed to take the brunt of this so that the spacecraft and the astronauts inside don’t get incinerated.

The investigation determined that gas trapped within the Orion capsule’s heat shield heated and expanded which blew pieces of it out. While, the spacecraft touched down intact, this could be potentially hazardous or even lethal to the astronauts and must be addressed before a crewed flight can be greenlit. Now that NASA knows what happened, they need to allot engineers time to rework all potential design flaws.

You should come away from this understanding that this delay is just part of the process of the space exploration and is an indication that progress is being made and work is being done to make this mission happen. Patience really is a virtue when it comes to astronomy! Hopefully it goes well and we’ll see humans in April 2026 break our half century absence from the Moon. I’ll certainly let you know if anything else changes!