In brief: NASA has announced another delay in its highly anticipated Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon. The agency revealed that it has identified an issue with the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft, the crew capsule designed to transport astronauts to and from the Moon during future Artemis missions.
During the uncrewed Artemis I mission that orbited the Moon last year, NASA discovered that the heat shield retained more heat in its outer layers than anticipated during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
This excess heat caused gases to become trapped, building up internal pressure and leading to cracking and uneven shedding of the outer heat shield layer. Such an issue is far from ideal when a capsule carrying astronauts is hurtling through the atmosphere at 25,000 mph.
NASA has proposed a fix: adjusting Orion's re-entry trajectory to slow the spacecraft down more gradually. However, implementing this solution requires yet another schedule adjustment. The Artemis II mission, originally slated to carry a crew on a lunar flyby in late 2025, has now been postponed to April 2026.
As for the pivotal Artemis III mission – intended to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon, marking humanity's return to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972 – it has been delayed from September 2026 to at least mid-2027.
In a post on X, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson put a positive spin on the latest setback, saying "The Artemis campaign is the most daring, technically challenging, collaborative, international endeavor humanity has ever set out to do. And we are committed to ensuring that when we go, we go safely. That's what today's decision is about – and how Artemis succeeds."
The #Artemis campaign is the most daring, technically challenging, collaborative, international endeavor humanity has ever set out to do.
– Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) December 5, 2024
And we are committed to ensuring that when we go, we go safely.
That's what today's decision is about – and how Artemis succeeds. https://t.co/9AHzGxECdI
The Artemis II crew – Commander Reid Wiseman, pilots Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen – appear to be taking the delay in stride. Wiseman expressed gratitude for NASA's transparent decision-making, stating that the crew is "thankful for the openness of NASA to weigh all options and make decisions in the best interest of human spaceflight."
This marks just the latest in a series of delays for the embattled Artemis program. Originally, the first uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon was scheduled for 2016. Yet, a host of technical challenges and budgetary constraints pushed that milestone back by six years, with the mission finally taking place in late 2022.
NASA delays crewed Artemis missions to 2027 due to faulty heat shield
