Here's why NASA's first moon landing in 50+ years will probably be delayed

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NASA is going back to the moon!! The next flight of the Artemis program, Artemis II (which will be the first flight with crew!) is scheduled for September 2025!! The first moon landing in 50 years is scheduled for September 2026!!!

Now let’s talk about why NASA’s triumphant return to the moon . . . will likely not happen on schedule.

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A quick summary of Artemis

Here’s what you need to know for the purposes of this newsletter: Orion is the crew capsule that will carry astronauts to the moon. SLS is the giant rocket that’s controversial because of its high cost. Artemis I was the first flight of the program, without crew, that lifted off on November 16, 2022, and for the most part it went very well.

Artemis II is the first crewed flight of the program, in which four astronauts will fly Orion around the moon on a 10-day mission. That’s scheduled for September 2025, while Artemis III, the first moon landing that will see two NASA astronauts set foot on the moon, is scheduled for September 2026.

(It goes without saying that if Artemis II is significantly delayed, it’s hard to imagine Artemis III will still be able to make a September 2026 launch date.)

Before I dive in, I want to make clear: I have tremendous respect for NASA, and I have a lot of respect for the people working there, as well as their partners. I like this program and I want NASA to go back to the moon. This is not intended as an attack or a diatribe. I’m just trying to talk honestly about my understanding of what’s going on.

Orion’s heat shield: It’s still bad!

On Artemis I, which was basically an uncrewed test flight of the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, NASA teams noticed something odd about the Orion capsule after splashdown: the heat shield didn’t behave as they expected.

The short story is that the heat shield is located at the base of the Orion capsule. It’s made of a material called Avcoat which is ablative, which basically means it protects the capsule from the heat of re-entry by melting off.

But for that first flight, it was charring and came off in chunks, and there was more liberation of heat shield material than expected, which is not how this is supposed to go.

It’s not good for many reasons. The bottom line is that if crew had been aboard, they wouldn’t have experienced any discomfort and they would have returned safely. But NASA also has a history of not exploring the root cause of problems when they occur; that culture led to both the Challenger and Columbia disasters, so they need to make sure they understand this problem and why it’s happening.

NASA has been very tight lipped about this issue. The only reason we know any details at all is that back in May, a report from the NASA Office of the Inspector General came out on NASA’s readiness for Artemis II. That report revealed the extent of the problem, gave us our only images of the damage, and informed us that the heat shield was part of the reason that Artemis II was delayed from November 2024 to September 2025.

According to NASA’s response to that report, an independent review board convened in May 2024 to try and find the root cause of the heat shield charring. Their estimated date to have a report ready was June 30, 2024.

As you can imagine, I took quite a bit of interest in this because it’s a big issue. I started reaching out to NASA in mid-June and pinging them every one to two weeks to see if there was a report ready or any findings they could disclose. I basically got “we expect something soon, check back in the next couple of weeks.”

At the end of August, a NASA official publicly confirmed that the review board had completed their investigation. I checked back and on September 6, I got this response:

Basically, from this I inferred that they had found the cause and NASA was trying to figure out how to proceed from there. Then this week Ars Technica reported that Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, did confirm that NASA had found the root cause of the issue and was embarking on more testing, which they expect to finish up by the end of November, and that Administrator Nelson himself will be involved in the final decisions. You can bet I’ll be tuning in for that media briefing and will report back.

But basically, what are even the options here?

There are two:

• Rebuild the heat shield to correct the flaws. The heat shield is already mounted to the Artemis II capsule, so this would require disassembling the entire thing. That could mean a delay of one to two years for the mission if this is the path forward.

• Change the re-entry angle. It’s possible that changing Orion’s flight plan and how it re-enters could lead to less stress on the heat shield and lower temperatures, and less charring as a result. Changes to the heat shield could then be implemented for Artemis III on.

The path forward will be determined by what’s safest for the crew, which is the most important consideration.

Now, if NASA can figure out the heat shield issue and come up with a solution for Artemis II that doesn’t involve dismantling the capsule, it is possible Artemis II could launch on or around its target date. But also, there’s more going on here.

SLS, or the boondoggle of a megarocket

SLS, or the Space Launch System, is NASA’s mega-rocket that will end up costing somewhere around $4.2 billion per launch, which is just an eye-watering figure.

But SLS did well for Artemis I. There were a lot of propellant loading issues which delayed the launch, but once SLS was off the ground it performed very well. For the duration of the flight, it either met or exceeded expectations. Now Artemis II will be the first crewed launch of the program and the first time putting crew on SLS, but the rocket will be pretty much the same.

NASA is planning on making some tweaks to the fueling process to make propellant loading go more smoothly, but most of the changes to SLS between Artemis I and II are to ground systems, which I’ll talk about later. There will likely be similar changes based on lessons learned for Artemis III, so again, not a huge stumbling block here.

But one thing to note: the Orion heat shield issue I talked about previously is impacting the the stacking SLS for Artemis II. I’ll explain how the ground hardware works a little later, but NASA is currently preparing to stack SLS for Artemis II in the Vehicle Assembly Building with Mobile Launcher 1.

The core stage, solid rocket boosters, and launch vehicle stage adapter are ready to go. They could start stacking the rocket in the next few weeks, but the thing is once they do, they need to be within about a year of launch because the joints connecting the pieces of SLS’s solid rocket boosters to the core are only certified for a year. That being said, NASA extended that to two for Artemis I, so it’s not overly concerning.

Waiting a few weeks to stack the rocket on the launch platform isn’t a huge deal, but it’s a good example of how one problem with a single part of the spacecraft can ripple across the entire mission.

The lunar lander question

What is a stumbling block is the status of the lunar lander. We don’t need a lunar lander for Artemis II — it’s a crewed flight, but there’s no landing. For Artemis III, they will use HLS, or the Human Landing System, to get to the moon’s surface. It will stay on the surface with them, and then they’ll return to lunar orbit in HLS.

This is a really complicated mission. If you’re familiar with the Apollo program, they had four crewed flights before attempting a lunar landing with Apollo 11. Apollo 7 was the first crewed flight of the program, after the Apollo 1 tragedy, just basically testing the hardware. Then Apollo 8 went around the moon, Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time in orbit, Apollo 10 went to lunar orbit and undocked and flew the lunar module but didn’t land, and then Apollo 11 was the lunar landing.

For Artemis, there’s only one flight to test the Orion capsule and SLS rocket with crew before the attempted lunar landing on Artemis III. Now, we’ve been to the moon before, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is all new hardware that needs to be tested in space to make sure it works.

That’s why the state of HLS is such a big deal. It’s going to be built by SpaceX as a variation of Starship (which is why NASA is watching those test flights of Starship so closely, because they need Starship to be operational for Artemis III to land on the moon).

The mission profile would have HLS launch into Earth orbit, where it will be refueled by Starship tankers that are already in Earth orbit. This is why SpaceX is working on propellant transfer demonstrations for Starship, another one is scheduled for 2025. Once refueled, HLS will head to the moon and place itself in near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon.

Then Artemis II will launch, an Orion crew vehicle on an SLS rocket, and it will dock with Starship in lunar orbit. Two astronauts would then transfer from HLS to Orion and descend to the lunar surface near the moon’s south pole, stay there for up to about a week, and then return to lunar orbit.

The thing is, if we were just talking about one HLS vehicle, it might be doable. Keep in mind that Starship isn’t operational yet, and there are quite a few test flights that still need to happen before it can become operational — this is a part of SpaceX’s current fight with the FAA over launch licensing, which these regulations are a whole story to themselves I will get into in another newsletter.

SpaceX needs to have a fleet of tankers in orbit to refuel HLS — estimates put it somewhere between 15 and 20 to be able to carry enough propellant to fully refuel HLS because of cryogenic propellant boil-off. SpaceX can build hardware fast enough, I’m not too worried about that aspect of it. But getting Starship operational, having enough Starship launches to get that many tankers, being able to launch them in rapid succession so early after it’s operational, demonstrating Starship’s crew comfort and life support systems can work in space and on the lunar surface — there’s a lot that has to go right here in a very short amount of time. We’re less than two years away from the scheduled launch date of Artemis III and Starship isn’t even operational yet.

It’s so much to test out that there have been whispers that NASA is looking at simplifying the parameters of Artemis III to do more hardware testing and not making it a landing mission, but until the whispers get much, much louder or the agency makes an announcement, we have to assume Artemis III will stick to its official mission profile.

While it really does not seem like HLS will be ready in time, I also don’t want to count SpaceX out fully. SpaceX has demonstrated a wild lack of adherence to their own stated time frames but they’ve also pulled off incredible feats.

That being said, a GAO report from January shows HLS as likely being delivered at least a year and a half late. There’s 70 percent confidence that HLS will be ready for a lunar landing by February 2028.

I should also mention that NASA awarded a second contract for a lunar lander last year to Blue Origin, but this hardware isn’t supposed to be ready until Artemis V, currently scheduled for 2029.

AxEMU: The spacesuit

Let’s say SpaceX manages to pull it off though — HLS is ready for a crewed mission by September 2026. Well, guess what else NASA astronauts need to walk around the moon?? Spacesuits!!!

And it’s looking like these might not be ready in time either.

NASA contracted with Axiom Space to make the first moonwalking suits, called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit. We actually just recently got our first full look at the outer layer of these suits, designed by both Axiom Space and Prada.

It’s as yet unclear when the suits will be ready for a crewed mission. They’re expected to enter Critical Design Review in 2025, which if the suit passes, will mean Axiom has a go ahead for production of the spacesuits.

Again, it’s very possible that they might be ready. But one of the big criticisms of the Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon EVA was the number of firsts — including opening the hatch to the vacuum of space in spacesuits that hadn’t been tested in space before. The whole thing went very well, but the question is, is this a similar issue? This may be part of those whispers around NASA about changing the profile of Artemis III — getting a chance to test out the moonwalking suits before the lunar landing.

If you’re wondering whether SpaceX suits can be used for Artemis, moonwalking suits have very specific needs, including being able to operate independently for at least 8 hours. SpaceX may very well be able to modify their suits to meet NASA’s specifications (they’ve said that the suits used on Polaris Dawn will eventually be adapted for use on the moon and Mars) but they aren’t currently usable as is.

That being said, SpaceX might start out ahead because the spacesuit has already been tested in space on a brief EVA. But they’d still have to go through NASA procedures and quality controls, and the Polaris Dawn spacesuit did not have a Personal Life Support System, or PLSS.

The two spacewalkers Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis were provided oxygen and power by umbilicals connected to their Crew Dragon spacecraft, and a PLSS is a huge component of a moonsuit and necessary for a spacewalk — it’s basically half the suit.

It’s definitely an interesting option but it’s just not really clear whether they could be operational in time, plus NASA doesn’t like awarding too many contracts to a single provider, and SpaceX already has the HLS contract.

Ground systems: Not the most fun, but still crucial

Now let’s talk about the most exciting part: Infrastructure!!

No, but seriously. Let’s talk about the Exploration Ground Systems, or EGS, and the Mobile Launcher.

EGS is basically systems and facilities to support the missions. There are three key parts of the Exploration Ground Systems or EGS for Artemis:

• processing of rockets and spacecraft and integration/stacking

• launch systems

• recovery of the crew and spacecraft. There’s a lot of support that goes into missions like these, and EGS covers a lot of it.

Well, a report from the GAO (Government Accountability Office) from two weeks ago makes it clear that these systems might not be ready in time for Artemis II. The first testing of a lot of these systems was with Artemis I, but adding crew to a flight drastically increases its complexity and the need for redundancy.

There are quite a few risks here:

• software is looking like it might not be ready

• there’s still work to do on the emergency egress system

• there’s issues with environmental controls

• the crew access arm is having problems and needs more testing.

Most of this stuff is pretty minor, but the problem the GAO points out is there’s no schedule margin left in case any of these things becomes a real issue. There’s about 3 months of schedule margin to complete all of these things to support a September 2025 launch date for Artemis II. Well, NASA has apparently assigned all that margin to refurbishment and upgrades of Mobile Launcher 1, which means that if any of these other things have more problems than expected, it will likely delay the Artemis II launch. And this is space, so there are always more problems than expected.

This brings me to the Mobile Launcher. Mobile Launcher 1, or ML1, was used during Artemis I. This basically supports the stacking and testing of the rocket, transfers SLS and Orion to the launch pad, and is the structural support to launch the rocket. Right now there is only one mobile launcher.

A second one is being constructed to be used for Artemis IV and beyond. It will not shock you at this point to know it’s delayed — a report from the NASA Office of the Inspector General from back in August says that ML2 will likely not be ready until spring 2029. Artemis IV is supposed to launch in September 2028, and considering the problems with Boeing’s building of the SLS Block IB, which will also be necessary for Artemis IV, I will be shocked if that mission takes off as planned.

But back to ML1. It sustained a surprising amount of damaged as a result of Artemis I. The crew elevator doors were blown off, the crew access arm was damaged — it took awhile to repair. While NASA had ML1 in the VAB, they were also upgrading it to support Artemis II. ML1 was rolled back to the VAB in December of 2022 and it’s only in the past few weeks that it’s ready to start stacking Artemis II, which means it took almost two years to refurbish and upgrade. There’s only one year on the schedule between Artemis II and Artemis III, which means the refurbishment and upgrades for that mission have to be a lot faster.

Part of the reason repairs to ML1 have taken so long is that NASA wanted to ensure that the structure is more robust so fewer repairs will be necessary after Artemis II launches, plus the modifications that need to be made between two crewed missions is much less intensive than those made between Artemis I and II, an uncrewed and crewed mission. All of that being said, though, the Mobile Launcher is still a concern here in terms of schedule.

Budget: Because it always comes back to money

Finally (yes, I am almost done), let’s talk about budget. To be clear, this isn’t specifically a thing that’s going to delay Artemis II or III but a GAO report from January also pointed out that NASA hasn’t publicly delivered a cost estimate for Artemis III. This mission is supposed to happen in less than two years, and we don’t really know how much it’s going to cost.

Instead of providing a full cost estimate, NASA is just asking for funding year to year in its budget requests, but that means that people making the decisions have no idea what the all-in cost for this lunar landing will be.

My guess is part of the reasoning here is that NASA doesn’t want to make it easier to cancel Artemis missions by separating them out. The idea is funding the whole Artemis program year to year, rather than an individual mission, especially because there are large up front costs to build infrastructure that gets reused through the program.

But it also makes it seem like Artemis is just this huge aimless blob that isn’t really going anywhere or doing anything, especially because of the high costs of SLS. For reference, for FY 2024, NASA requested $6.8 billion for the Artemis program. Of that, SLS was $2.5 billion. Not offering clarity into budgets is a great way to be underfunded, or even worse, have a program cancelled in my opinion. And without the money to make Artemis happen, there’s no way NASA will meet their September 2026 goal of landing on the moon.

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