The heat shield for Orion, which is the crew vehicle for the Artemis program (which is supposed to return humans to the surface of the moon this decade), is having some problems.
During the flight of Artemis I, NASA noticed that the heat shield behaved in unexpected ways. So, what's going on??
🚀 🌔 Possibly the first American moon landing in 50 years, scheduled for later today. A commercial vehicle is carrying NASA science payloads but no crew. Pretty cool.
I know this is a really long video, but you can watch it at 2x speed and it's important to understand what the fuck is going on with the #Artemis program.
Say what you will about Bezos (no, seriously, do; he's done monstrous things as Amazon CEO), but he is very, very good at whipping a company into shape. E.Morlock, OTOH, is just a parasite and a thief.
Okay, that's not real news, we've known that for awhile. The real news is that the seismic instability that results from that might affect NASA's moon landings. Here's more:
The moon is shrinking, which could cause a bit of a problem with the scheduled Artemis 3 landing in 2026. No, the moon is still a plenty big enough target. But the shrinking is causing moonquakes and lunar landslides. So when human boots tread the moon yet again, the humans in question will have to plan for the possibility that the ground under those boots is not as stable as they might hope. Live Science explains: https://flip.it/In2xiZ #Science#Moon#Artemis#Space#LunarLanding
🇧🇪 La #Belgique est devenue le 34e pays à signer les Accords #Artemis avec la NASA.
Signature en présence des astronautes Frank De Winne et Raphaël Liégeois.
📷 via Thomas Dermine
👨🏼🚀🌑 Axiom Space a publié de nouvelles photos du développement de ses combinaisons spatiales AxEMU pour les missions sur le sol lunaire #Artemis. Les astronautes s'entraînent déjà pour valider le design avant d'être certifié par la NASA
NASA announced a delay for the Artemis program yesterday, which are its missions to return humans to the surface of the moon. Here are the new dates, as well as why NASA made this decision.
NASA's Artemis mission dates have been pushed out by about a year.
New dates:
Artemis II: Sept 2025. Crewed flight around the Moon and back, using SLS and Orion.
Artemis III: Sept 2026. Lunar landing by 2 astronauts, using SLS, Orion and SpaceX Starship lander.
Reasons - modifications to the Orion spacecraft affecting crew safety based on problems found during Artemis I. Plus delays in Starship development for the complex Artemis III mission.
Artemis III is a complex lunar landing mission with multiple spacecraft and organizations.
The SLS will transport 4 astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft back and forth to a lunar highly elliptical NRHO polar orbit.
Separately, a SpaceX Starship-based lander will rendezvous with Orion and transport 2 astronauts back and forth to the lunar surface near the south polar region for one week of exploration.
Here is what SpaceX has to develop/test for Artemis III -
Launch a storage depot to Earth orbit (using Starship).
Launch 10+ tankers with propellant to the storage depot (using Starship).
Launch Starship human landing system (HLS) (using another Starship).
Refuel in earth orbit.
Travel to lunar orbit.
Transfer crew from Orion to HLS (Orion with crew launched by SLS).
Land.
Liftoff.
Transfer crew to Orion.