Long story short, they launched an investigation into the Artemis I heatshield and found that during reentry, gases generated inside the Avcoat (the shield's ablative material) could not vent properly which caused pressure to build up, leading to cracking of charred chunks but well within margins. They are adjusting Orion's reentry profile for Artemis II to a steeper angle to reduce the dwell time at altitudes where this outgassing occurs, so it will spend about 8 minutes rather than the 15 minutes in these conditions.
NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Very close call for Vulcan this morning. Another Northrop solid rocket issue nearly caused the loss of the mission.
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- Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
- Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
- Artemis IV, V and beyond will use a "standardized" (most likely Centaur V) upper stage
- Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
- Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
- NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in "mid" 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
- NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond
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At this point will there actually be a manned moon mission or will the funds for it be eaten by something else, because this is not a good indicator especially since they want to beat China to the moon.
broadsword
Brigadier
Lunar gateway, which was bragged for a long time by some people in this forum is finally and officially dead. NASA basically returned to the archetecture of Constellation program, LEO rendezvous and then to LLO to moon surface and back, that is a decades long learning circle. Yet they added an extra and risky element that constellation avoided, the in orbit cryogenic refueling. NASA and by large, the US seems to hold the philosophy of "if one can make it complicated and expensive why make it simple and cheap?"
BTW, buidling moon surface base in steps sounds like a copy of China's homework.
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I saw a documentary where ex-NASA engineers say the heat shield is a disaster waiting to happen. They have no idea how the heatshield will do in a steeper angle, it has never been tested before. They said the heat shield should be redesigned but this would set the mission back by years and this was not acceptable.