US EditionArtemis 2 Crew Enters Quarantine Amid Heat Shield Concerns
NASA modified Artemis II’s reentry path to reduce heat shield stress after Artemis I damage, aiming to ensure crew safety without redesigning the existing shield.
- On February 6 NASA plans to fly four astronauts on Artemis II aboard the Orion spacecraft despite a known heat‑shield flaw, and the Orion stack was rolled to the pad on January 17.
- Program managers changed the heat‑shield design by shifting Avcoat from a honeycomb application to a block-based design, reducing permeability and causing gas buildup that damaged Artemis I and Artemis II's Orion heat shields.
- Modeling and lab tests indicate NASA's Tiger Team aligned Crack Indication Tool results with real-world data, but Charlie Camarda argues the CIT is simplistic and cannot predict crack growth.
- NASA opted to alter the flight profile and proceed with the installed Artemis II Orion capsule heat shield, facing final risk assessments and a flight‑readiness review days before launch with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen onboard.
- Former officials warn that Charlie Camarda says NASA's heat-shield choice reflects reduced dissent tolerance, citing Columbia disaster lessons and Space Shuttle program statistics, cautioning a safe Artemis II could lull the agency.
35 Articles
35 Articles
Experts Warn That There's Something Wrong With the Moon Rocket NASA Is About to Launch With Astronauts Aboard
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…
By Jackie Wattles, CNN When four astronauts begin a historic journey around the Moon on February 6, they will board NASA's Orion spacecraft, 5 meters wide, knowing that it has a known fault, which has led some experts to urge the space agency not to carry out the mission with humans on board. However, NASA trusts that it has solved the problem and that the vehicle will be able to bring the crew home safely. The problem is related to a special co…
The Artemis II mission, which will take four astronauts on a "historic" flight around the Moon this year, will take a key step on Saturday with the transfer and assembly of the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion capsule on the launch platform of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. It is a complex logistical operation that can extend up to 12 hours and will mark the return of a human crew beyond low Earth orbit for the firs…
NASA is about to send people to the moon — in a spacecraft not everyone thinks is safe to fly
As the four-person crew of Artemis II prepares to launch on a historic mission around the moon as soon as February, some experts are worried about the spacecraft’s heat shield.
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