FAQ: NASA’s Artemis Campaign and Recent Updates

The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign and will pave the way to land astronauts on the Moon on Artemis III and future missions. The crew of four aboard the agency’s Orion spacecraft will travel around the Moon and back to confirm the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space. Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts – including the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut – to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for crewed missions to Mars.

On Dec. 5, NASA updated its timelines for the missions and shared the results of an investigation into the Orion heat shield after it experienced an unexpected loss of charred material during re-entry of the Artemis I uncrewed test flight in late 2022.

Here are some frequently asked questions about Artemis II, NASA’s recent updates, and the agency’s path to the Moon and Mars.

What is Orion?

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is where our crew live while traveling to and from deep space. Orion is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. On Artemis missions, Orion will carry crews of four astronauts from Earth to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain them as they venture to the Moon, and safely return them to Earth from deep space speeds and temperatures.

What is a heat shield and why is it important?

When Orion travels back from deep space, its journey through Earth’s atmosphere generates intense temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit on parts of the spacecraft. The 16-foot diameter protective heat shield on the bottom of the capsule is designed to dissipate that heat and keep the crew inside safe. Orion’s heat shield is primarily composed of Avcoat, a material designed to wear away as it heats up.

What abnormal behavior did you see on the Artemis I heat shield?

NASA flew the uncrewed Artemis I mission in late 2022 to test Orion, the agency’s SLS rocket, and the ground systems needed to launch them, testing these elements together for the first time to ensure engineers understand everything about the systems before flights with astronauts. The successful test flight sent Orion past the Moon and provided valuable data to ensure our deep space spacecraft and other systems are ready for crewed missions. When Orion returned to Earth, engineers saw variations across Orion’s heat shield they did not expect. Some of the charred material had broken off. If a crew had been aboard the flight, they would have remained safe, but understanding the phenomenon has been the subject of an extensive investigation since the test flight.

What did NASA find as the cause of the issue?

Engineers determined that as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. This allowed pressure to build up and horizontal cracking to occur near the surface of the charred layer, causing some charred material to break off in several locations.

For Artemis II, engineers will limit how long Orion spends in the temperature range in which the Artemis I heat shield phenomenon occurred by modifying how far Orion can fly between when it enters Earth atmosphere and lands. Engineers already are assembling and integrating the Orion spacecraft for Artemis III based on lessons learned from Artemis I and implementing enhancements to how heat shields for crewed returns from lunar landing missions are manufactured to achieve uniformity and consistent permeability. A more detailed description is here.

Why did NASA decide to use the current heat shield?

Extensive data from the investigation has given engineers confidence the heat shield for Artemis II can be used to safely fly the mission’s crew around the Moon and back. NASA will modify the trajectory by shortening how far Orion can fly between when it enters Earth’s atmosphere and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. This will limit how long Orion spends in the temperature range in which the Artemis I heat shield phenomenon occurred. The heat shield for the test flight is already attached to Orion.

When will Artemis II take place?

The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew aboard the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft and will pave the way to land astronauts on the Moon on Artemis III. Artemis II builds on the success of the uncrewed Artemis I mission and will demonstrate a broad range of capabilities needed on lunar missions. The 10-day flight will help to confirm all of the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space. The mission is targeted for April 2026.

The updated timeline for the Artemis II flight is informed by technical issues engineers are troubleshooting including with an Orion battery issue and its environmental control system. The heat shield was installed in June 2023 and the root cause investigation took place in parallel to other assembly and testing activities to preserve as much schedule as possible.

What are the astronauts doing during the mission delay?

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen will continue training for the mission. More intensive training will begin about six months before launch.

About the Artemis Campaign

What is Artemis?

NASA is establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for scientific exploration and discovery with our commercial and international partners, learning how to live and work far from home, and preparing for future human exploration of Mars – we call this endeavor Artemis. Under Artemis, NASA will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.

Why is NASA going back to the Moon?

NASA is going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. Artemis is a new approach to America’s space exploration efforts — it is the most technically challenging, collaborative, international endeavor humanity has ever set out to do. What we learn from expanding scientific knowledge and developing new technologies will be applied to improve life on Earth. Samples from the lunar South Pole could tell us more about the formation of our planet and origins of our solar system. We are meeting this challenge by investing in American ingenuity and leadership to advance our understanding of the universe for the benefit of all.

What makes Artemis different from Apollo?

The Apollo Program successfully landed 12 men near the equator of the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Under Artemis, NASA is going to the lunar South Pole region, where no humans have ever set foot, in new ways with commercial and international partners. The agency is leading the largest international coalition in space to push humanity farther than ever before for the benefit of all, developing capabilities for astronauts to live and work on the Moon before our next giant leap – human exploration of Mars.

What happens after Artemis II?

Artemis III will build on the crewed Artemis II flight test, adding new capabilities with the human landing system and advanced spacesuits to send the first humans to explore the lunar South Pole region. Over the course of about 30 days a crew of four will launch atop the Space Launch System rocket in Orion and travel to a special lunar orbit where they will dock with SpaceX’s Starship human landing system. Two Artemis crew members will transfer from Orion to Starship and descend to the lunar surface. There, they will collect samples, perform science experiments, and observe the Moon’s environment before returning in Starship to Orion waiting in lunar orbit. The mission is planned for mid-2027.

NASA is also working with SpaceX to further develop the company’s Starship lander requirements for Artemis IV. These requirements include landing more mass on the Moon and docking with the agency’s Gateway lunar space station for crew transfer. NASA will use Blue Origin’s human landing system for Artemis V.

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Gary Daines

NASA Shares Orion Heat Shield Findings, Updates Artemis Moon Missions

Lee esta historia en español aquí.

Through the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the next American astronauts and first international astronaut on the South Pole region of the Moon. On Thursday, NASA announced the latest updates to its lunar exploration plans.

Experts discussed results of NASA’s investigation into its Orion spacecraft heat shield after it experienced an unexpected loss of charred material during re-entry of the Artemis I uncrewed test flight. For the Artemis II crewed test flight, engineers will continue to prepare Orion with the heat shield already attached to the capsule. The agency also announced it is now targeting April 2026 for Artemis II and mid-2027 for Artemis III. The updated mission timelines also reflect time to address the Orion environmental control and life support systems.

“The Artemis campaign is the most daring, technically challenging, collaborative, international endeavor humanity has ever set out to do,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We have made significant progress on the Artemis campaign over the past four years, and I’m proud of the work our teams have done to prepare us for this next step forward in exploration as we look to learn more about Orion’s life support systems to sustain crew operations during Artemis II. We need to get this next test flight right. That’s how the Artemis campaign succeeds.”

The agency’s decision comes after an extensive investigation of an Artemis I heat shield issue showed the Artemis II heat shield can keep the crew safe during the planned mission with changes to Orion’s trajectory as it enters Earth’s atmosphere and slows from nearly 25,000 mph to about 325 mph before its parachutes unfurl for safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

“Throughout our process to investigate the heat shield phenomenon and determine a forward path, we’ve stayed true to NASA’s core values; safety and data-driven analysis remained at the forefront,” said Catherine Koerner, associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The updates to our mission plans are a positive step toward ensuring we can safely accomplish our objectives at the Moon and develop the technologies and capabilities needed for crewed Mars missions.”

NASA will continue stacking its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket elements, which began in November, and prepare it for integration with Orion for Artemis II.

Throughout the fall months, NASA, along with an independent review team, established the technical cause of an issue seen after the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in which charred material on the heat shield wore away differently than expected. Extensive analysis, including from more than 100 tests at unique facilities across the country, determined the heat shield on Artemis I did not allow for enough of the gases generated inside a material called Avcoat to escape, which caused some of the material to crack and break off. Avcoat is designed to wear away as it heats up and is a key material in the thermal protection system that guards Orion and its crew from the nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit of temperatures that are generated when Orion returns from the Moon through Earth’s atmosphere. Although a crew was not inside Orion during Artemis I, data shows the temperature inside Orion remained comfortable and safe had crew been aboard.

Engineers already are assembling and integrating the Orion spacecraft for Artemis III based on lessons learned from Artemis I and implementing enhancements to how heat shields for crewed returns from lunar landing missions are manufactured to achieve uniformity and consistent permeability. The skip entry is needed for return from speeds expected for lunar landing missions.

“Victor, Christina, Jeremy, and I have been following every aspect of this decision and we are thankful for the openness of NASA to weigh all options and make decisions in the best interest of human spaceflight. We are excited to fly Artemis II and continue paving the way for sustained human exploration of the Moon and Mars,” said Reid Wiseman, NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander. “We were at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently and put eyes on our SLS rocket boosters, the core stage, and the Orion spacecraft. It is inspiring to see the scale of this effort, to meet the people working on this machine, and we can’t wait to fly it to the Moon.”

Wiseman, along with NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will fly aboard the 10-day Artemis II test flight around the Moon and back. The flight will provide valuable data about Orion systems needed to support crew on their journey to deep space and bring them safely home, including air revitalization in the cabin, manual flying capabilities, and how humans interact with other hardware and software in the spacecraft.

With Artemis, NASA will explore more of the Moon than ever before, learn how to live and work farther away from home, and prepare for future human exploration of the Red Planet. NASA’s SLS, exploration ground systems, and Orion spacecraft, along with the human landing system, next-generation spacesuits, Gateway lunar space station, and future rovers are NASA’s foundation for deep space exploration.

For more information about Artemis, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

-end-

Meira Bernstein / Rachel Kraft
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov

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Abbey A. Donaldson

NASA Identifies Cause of Artemis I Orion Heat Shield Char Loss

After extensive analysis and testing, NASA has identified the technical cause of unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s heat shield.

Engineers determined as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations.

“Our early Artemis flights are a test campaign, and the Artemis I test flight gave us an opportunity to check out our systems in the deep space environment before adding crew on future missions,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program Office, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The heat shield investigation helped ensure we fully understand the cause and nature of the issue, as well as the risk we are asking our crews to take when they venture to the Moon.”

Findings

Teams took a methodical approach to understanding and identifying the root cause of the char loss issue, including detailed sampling of the Artemis I heat shield, review of imagery and data from sensors on the spacecraft, and comprehensive ground testing and analysis.

During Artemis I, engineers used the skip guidance entry technique to return Orion to Earth. This technique provides more flexibility by extending the range Orion can fly after the point of reentry to a landing spot in the Pacific Ocean. Using this maneuver, Orion dipped into the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to slow down. Orion then used the aerodynamic lift of the capsule to skip back out of the atmosphere, then reenter for final descent under parachutes to splashdown.

Using Avcoat material response data from Artemis I, the investigation team was able to replicate the Artemis I entry trajectory environment — a key part of understanding the cause of the issue — inside the arc jet facilities at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. They observed that during the period between dips into the atmosphere, heating rates decreased, and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This led to the accumulation of gases that are part of the expected ablation process. Because the Avcoat did not have “permeability,” internal pressure built up, and led to cracking and uneven shedding of the outer layer.

Teams performed extensive ground testing to replicate the skip phenomenon before Artemis I. However, they tested at much higher heating rates than the spacecraft experienced in flight. The high heating rates tested on the ground allowed the permeable char to form and ablate as expected, releasing the gas pressure. The less severe heating seen during the actual Artemis I reentry slowed down the process of char formation, while still creating gases in the char layer. Gas pressure built up to the point of cracking the Avcoat and releasing parts of the charred layer. Recent enhancements to the arc jet facility have enabled a more accurate reproduction of the Artemis I measured flight environments, so that this cracking behavior could be demonstrated in ground testing.

While Artemis I was uncrewed, flight data showed that had crew been aboard, they would have been safe. The temperature data from the crew module systems inside the cabin were also well within limits and holding steady in the mid-70s Fahrenheit. Thermal performance of the heat shield exceeded expectations.

Engineers understand both the material phenomenon and the environment the materials interact with during entry. By changing the material or the environment, they can predict how the spacecraft will respond. NASA teams unanimously agreed the agency can develop acceptable flight rationale that will keep crew safe using the current Artemis II heat shield with operational changes to entry.

NASA’s Investigation Process

Soon after NASA engineers discovered the condition on the Artemis I heat shield, the agency began an extensive investigation process, which included a multi-disciplinary team of experts in thermal protection systems, aerothermodynamics, thermal testing and analysis, stress analysis, material test and analysis, and many other related technical areas. NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center was also engaged to provide technical expertise including nondestructive evaluation, thermal and structural analysis, fault tree analysis, and other testing support.

“We took our heat shield investigation process extremely seriously with crew safety as the driving force behind the investigation,” said Howard Hu, manager, Orion Program, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The process was extensive. We gave the team the time needed to investigate every possible cause, and they worked tirelessly to ensure we understood the phenomenon and the necessary steps to mitigate this issue for future missions.”

The Artemis I heat shield was heavily instrumented for flight with pressure sensors, strain gauges, and thermocouples at varying ablative material depths. Data from these instruments augmented analysis of physical samples, allowing the team to validate computer models, create environmental reconstructions, provide internal temperature profiles, and give insight into the timing of the char loss.

Approximately 200 Avcoat samples were removed from the Artemis I heat shield at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama for analysis and inspection. The team performed non-destructive evaluation to “see” inside the heat shield.

One of the most important findings from examining these samples was that local areas of permeable Avcoat, which had been identified prior to the flight, did not experience cracking or char loss. Since these areas were permeable at the start of the entry, the gases produced by ablation were able to adequately vent, eliminating the pressure build up, cracking, and char loss. 

Engineers performed eight separate post-flight thermal test campaigns to support the root cause analysis, completing 121 individual tests. These tests took place in facilities with unique capabilities across the country, including the Aerodynamic Heating Facility at the Arc-Jet Complex at Ames to test convective heating profiles with various test gases; the Laser Hardened Materials Evaluation Laboratory at Wright‐Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to test radiative heating profiles and provide real-time radiography; as well as the Interaction Heating Facility at Ames to test combined convective and radiative heating profiles in the air at full-block scale.

Aerothermal experts also completed two hypersonic wind tunnel test campaigns at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia and CUBRC aerodynamic test facilities in Buffalo, New York, to test a variety of char loss configurations and enhance and validate analytical models. Permeability testing was also performed at Kratos in Alabama, the University of Kentucky, and Ames to help further characterize the Avcoat’s elemental volume and porosity. The Advanced Light Source test facility, a U.S. Department of Energy scientific user facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was also used by engineers to examine the heating behavior of the Avcoat at a microstructure level.

In the spring of 2024, NASA stood up an independent review team to conduct an extensive review of the agency’s investigation process, findings, and results. The independent review was led by Paul Hill, a former NASA leader who served as the lead space shuttle flight director for Return to Flight after the Columbia accident, led NASA’s Mission Operations Directorate, and is a current member of the agency’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. The review occurred over a three-month period to assess the heat shield’s post-flight condition, entry environment data, ablator thermal response, and NASA’s investigation progress. The review team agreed with NASA’s findings on the technical cause of the physical behavior of the heat shield.

Heat Shield Advancements

Knowing that permeability of Avcoat is a key parameter to avoid or minimize char loss, NASA has the right information to assure crew safety and improve performance of future Artemis heat shields. Throughout its history, NASA has learned from each of its flights and incorporated improvements into hardware and operations. The data gathered throughout the Artemis I test flight has provided engineers with invaluable information to inform future designs and refinements. Lunar return flight performance data and a robust ground test qualification program improved after the Artemis I flight experience are supporting production enhancements for Orion’s heat shield. Future heat shields for Orion’s return from Artemis lunar landing missions are being produced to achieve uniformity and consistent permeability. The qualification program is currently being completed along with the production of more permeable Avcoat blocks at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

For more information about NASA’s Artemis campaign, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

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Erika Peters

NASA’s Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar

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NASA’s Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar

Astronomers have used the unique capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to peer closer than ever into the throat of an energetic monster black hole powering a quasar. A quasar is a galactic center that glows brightly as the black hole consumes material in its immediate surroundings.

The new Hubble views of the environment around the quasar show a lot of “weird things,” according to Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”

Some of the objects could be small satellite galaxies falling into the black hole, and so they could offer the materials that will accrete onto the central supermassive black hole, powering the bright lighthouse. “Thanks to Hubble’s observing power, we’re opening a new gateway into understanding quasars,” said Ren. “My colleagues are excited because they’ve never seen this much detail before.”

Quasars look starlike as point sources of light in the sky (hence the name quasi-stellar object). The quasar in the new study, 3C 273, was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt as the first quasar. At a distance of 2.5 billion light-years it was too far away for a star. It must have been more energetic than ever imagined, with a luminosity over 10 times brighter than the brightest giant elliptical galaxies. This opened the door to an unexpected new puzzle in cosmology: What is powering this massive energy production? The likely culprit was material accreting onto a black hole.

In 1994 Hubble’s new sharp view revealed that the environment surrounding quasars is far more complex than first suspected. The images suggested galactic collisions and mergers between quasars and companion galaxies, where debris cascades down onto supermassive black holes. This reignites the giant black holes that drive quasars.

For Hubble, staring into the quasar 3C 273 is like looking directly into a blinding car headlight and trying to see an ant crawling on the rim around it. The quasar pours out thousands of times the entire energy of stars in a galaxy. One of closest quasars to Earth, 3C 273 is 2.5 billion light-years away. (If it was very nearby, a few tens of light-years from Earth, it would appear as bright as the Sun in the sky!) Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) can serve as a coronagraph to block light from central sources, not unlike how the Moon blocks the Sun’s glare during a total solar eclipse. Astronomers have used STIS to unveil dusty disks around stars to understand the formation of planetary systems, and now they can use STIS to better understand quasars’ host galaxies. The Hubble coronograph allowed astronomers to look eight times closer to the black hole than ever before.

Scientists got rare insight into the quasar’s 300,000-light-year-long extragalactic jet of material blazing across space at nearly the speed of light. By comparing the STIS coronagraphic data with archival STIS images with a 22-year separation, the team led by Ren concluded that the jet is moving faster when it is farther away from the monster black hole.

“With the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble bridged a gap between the small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations, and thus we can take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar host morphology. Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail. In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues,” said Ren.

At least 1 million quasars are scattered across the sky. They are useful background “spotlights” for a variety of astronomical observations. Quasars were most abundant about 3 billion years after the big bang, when galaxy collisions were more common.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

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Media Contacts:

Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD

Science Contact:

Bin Ren
Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, France

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Fresh Eyes on Ice Project Wins Award

Congratulations to the Fresh Eyes on Ice project, which received a C. Peter Magrath exemplary project award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities! The award recognizes programs that demonstrate how colleges and universities have redesigned their learning, discovery, and engagement missions to deepen their partnerships and achieve broader impacts in their communities.

“Thank you to all of you for making this project what it is.” said Fresh Eyes on Ice project lead Research Professor Katie Spellman from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “We couldn’t do it without you.”

Fresh Eyes on Ice tracks changes in the timing and thickness of ice throughout Alaska and the circumpolar north. You can get involved by downloading the GLOBE Observer app and taking photos of ice conditions using the GLOBE Land Cover protocol.

Fresh Eyes on Ice is supported by the Navigating the New Arctic Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation and the NASA Citizen Science for Earth Systems Program.

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