ORLANDO — When four astronauts begin a historic trip around the moon as soon as Feb. 6, they’ll climb aboard NASA’s 16.5-foot-wide Orion spacecraft with the understanding that it has a known flaw — one that has some experts urging the space agency not to fly the mission with humans on board. But NASA remains confident it has a handle on the problem and the vehicle can bring the crew home safely.
The issue relates to a special coating applied to the bottom part of the spacecraft, called the heat shield. It’s a crucial piece of hardware designed to protect the astronauts from extreme temperatures as they’re descending back to Earth during the final stretch of their moon-bound mission called Artemis II.
This vital part of the Orion spacecraft is nearly identical to the heat shield flown on Artemis I, an uncrewed 2022 test flight. That prior mission’s Orion vehicle returned from space with a heat shield pockmarked by unexpected damage — prompting NASA to investigate the issue.
And while NASA is poised to clear the heat shield for flight, even those who believe the mission is safe acknowledge there is unknown risk involved.
“This is a deviant heat shield,” said Dr. Danny Olivas, a former NASA astronaut who served on a space agency-appointed independent review team that investigated the incident. “There’s no doubt about it: This is not the heat shield that NASA would want to give its astronauts.”
Still, Olivas said he believes after spending years analyzing what went wrong with the heat shield, NASA “has its arms around the problem.”
Upon completing the investigation about a year ago, NASA determined it would fly the Artemis II Orion capsule as is, believing it could ensure the crew’s safety by slightly altering the mission’s flight path.
In a statement to CNN on Friday, NASA said the agency “considered all aspects” when making that decision, noting there is also “uncertainty that comes with the development and qualification of the processes of changing the manufacturing process of the Avcoat ablator blocks.”
Basically, NASA said, there’s uncertainty involved no matter which course of action it takes.
“I think in my mind, there’s no flight that ever takes off where you don’t have a lingering doubt,” Olivas said. “But NASA really does understand what they have. They know the importance of the heat shield to crew safety, and I do believe that they’ve done the job.”
Lakiesha Hawkins, the acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, echoed that sentiment in September, saying, “from a risk perspective, we feel very confident.”
And Reid Wiseman, the astronaut set to command the Artemis II mission, has expressed his confidence.
“The investigators discovered the root cause, which was the key” to understanding and solving the heat shield issue, Wiseman told reporters last July. “If we stick to the new reentry path that NASA has planned, then this heat shield will be safe to fly.”
Others aren’t so sure.
“What they’re talking about doing is crazy,” said Dr. Charlie Camarda, a heat shield expert, research scientist and former NASA astronaut.
Camarda — who was also a member of the first space shuttle crew to launch after the 2003 Columbia disaster — is among a group of former NASA employees who do not believe that the space agency should put astronauts on board the upcoming lunar excursion. He said he has spent months trying to get agency leadership to heed his warnings to no avail.
“We could have solved this problem way back when,” Camarda, who worked as a NASA research scientist for two decades before becoming an astronaut, said of the heat shield issue. “Instead, they keep kicking the can down the road.”
Now, the agency appears on track to green-light Artemis II for takeoff, as its leaders have sought to assure the public — and the crew — the mission will be safe.
The Orion spacecraft was rolled to its launchpad atop the Space Launch System rocket on Jan. 17. And a crucial milestone could be days away as Artemis program leaders gather for final risk assessments and the flight readiness review, a meeting in which top brass will determine whether the Artemis II rocket and spacecraft are ready to take off with NASA’s Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, on board.
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