NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft has made it back to terra firma.
Orion reached Naval Base San Diego on Tuesday (Dec. 13) aboard the USS Portland, the U.S. Navy recovery ship that fished the capsule out of the Pacific Ocean on Sunday (Dec. 11) following its successful splashdown.
The spacecraft will be offloaded from the Portland on Wednesday (Dec. 14) and will then begin an overland trek to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, KSC officials said via Twitter on Tuesday (opens in new tab).
In photos: 10 greatest images from NASA’s Artemis 1 mission
That will be a homecoming for Orion, which lifted off from KSC atop a Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket on Nov. 16, kicking off the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission.
Everything went well on the shakeout cruise; the SLS sent Orion on its way to the moon as planned, and the capsule checked off all of its desired milestones in deep space.
Orion arrived in lunar orbit on Nov. 25, departed on Dec. 1 and headed for Earth on Dec. 5 by conducting a long engine burn during a close flyby of the moon. The spacecraft returned to its home planet on Sunday, splashing down softly under parachutes about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft floats in the Pacific Ocean after a successful splashdown on Dec. 11, 2022. (Image credit: NASA TV)
Once Orion arrives at KSC, Artemis 1 team members will give it a thorough going-over, assessing how the spacecraft and its many subsystems held up in deep space and the harrowing return trip through Earth’s atmosphere.
Technicians will also remove some hardware from the capsule for processing and reuse on Artemis 2, the next mission in NASA’s Artemis program of lunar exploration.
Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch astronauts around the moon in 2024. If all goes well with that flight, Artemis 3 will aim to put boots down near the lunar south pole a year or two later, using a SpaceX Starship vehicle as a lander.
NASA aims to build a research base in the south polar region, which is thought to harbor lots of water ice. The agency also plans to build a small space station in lunar orbit called Gateway, which will serve as a jumping-off point for missions to the surface, both crewed and uncrewed.
The first components of Gateway are scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in late 2024.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
NASA’s Orion spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth on November 28.Image: NASA
After traveling more than 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) on an historic journey to the Moon and back, NASA’s Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday following its near-perfect test flight.
This week, NASA released a 24-minute video highlighting some of the most exciting moments from the 25.5 day mission from the moment the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launched until the Orion spacecraft parachuted its way down.
Artemis I Mission Highlights
SLS lifted off from Launch Pad 39B at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on November 16, initiating NASA’s Artemis program that plans on returning humans to the Moon after more than 50 years.
The video starts off with the explosive launch, revealing a unique rocket POV as it leaves the ground. SLS’ two side boosters and four RS-25 engines produced a whopping 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, making it the most powerful rocket ever built.
The rocket is then seen soaring through the dark skies, followed by a fiery tail. The side boosters and core stage fell within the first 500 seconds of the mission, while the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage moved Orion towards its trajectory before separating from the spacecraft.
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Afterwards, all focus is on Orion. The video then shows the inside of the crew cabin, which was decorated with hidden messages and mementos. The loud roars of the rocket launch are followed by the peaceful calm of space, with breathtaking views of Earth and the Moon taken by Orion’s cameras.
The uncrewed capsule is eerily quiet, with the back of Commander Moonikin Campos, a manikin designed to collect flight data, towards the camera. But the inanimate commander is enjoying quite the view, with hauntingly memorable shots that reveal Earth and its satellite within the depths of space.
During the mission, Orion performed two lunar flybys and came within a distance of 80 miles (128 kilometers) from the Moon’s surface.
With a little less than 10 minutes left in the video, the Orion capsule begins its descent back to Earth. Orion went from 20,000 miles per hour (32,100 kilometers per hour) down to 20 mph (32 km/hr) during its parachute-assisted descent. During its re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, Orion endured temperatures of about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius), which is around half as hot as the surface of the Sun, according to NASA.
The video provides a dizzying POV as the capsule makes its way down to the ocean, with the three parachutes fluttering overhead. Orion finally plops into the ocean, ending its unprecedented journey to the Moon and back.
More: NASA Hid These Easter Eggs for Space Nerds on the Artemis 1 Orion Capsule
Relive NASA’s epic Artemis 1 moon mission in a highlight reel showing launch to landing.
The video opens with the previously-unflown Space Launch System flawlessly launching the Orion spacecraft and sending it on to the moon on Nov. 16, demonstrating the first major goal of bringing a human-rated spacecraft to space.
Following launch, the highlight reel then follows Orion on its 25.5-day journey for Artemis 1, demonstrating it could fly in a distant retrograde orbit around the moon and safely come back to Earth again. The video then ends with the final test of re-entry and splashdown on Sunday (Dec. 11), which saw Orion’s 11 parachutes open in sequence for soft descent to the Pacific Ocean.
In photos: 10 greatest images from NASA’s Artemis 1 mission
The gate-opener mission for the larger Artemis program produced stunning footage throughout its mission, showcasing the Earth and the moon in stunning views. Moonsets, Earthrises and a photobombing spacecraft all featured in live footage that NASA streamed from deep space, making us all feel like astronauts for a month.
While viewers also got to ride along with the Apollo program, the footage of the 1960s and 1970s was largely delivered after the fact. And even for those missions that beamed back footage in color, it certainly wasn’t in 4K. Nor were we able to have a “Star Wars” moment with the launch abort system ripping away within view of a video positioned in the cockpit.
Months of analysis on Artemis 1 will follow after NASA secures the spacecraft, which will make its way to Florida by road from San Diego after the U.S. Navy brings it ashore from its Pacific Ocean splashdown site. The lessons learned from this mission will inform Artemis 2, which will bring a crew of astronauts around the moon no earlier than 2024.
The next mission will be a key test of life support systems ahead of Artemis 3, which will bring astronauts down to the moon’s surface in 2025 or so. As NASA continues to build out Artemis missions, it will also be creating the Gateway space station to support surface operations from lunar orbit.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
The Orion capsule was uncrewed but filled with several mementos. Image: NASA
Following its trip to the Moon and back, NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashed down into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday. The inaugural flight for the Artemis program may have been uncrewed, but Orion carried five souvenirs to honor a legacy of lunar exploration.
NASA has a longstanding tradition of stashing hidden messages and mementos on board its spacecraft. In 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched to interstellar space carrying a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk known as The Golden Record. The phonograph record included various images and sounds that represent life on Earth, in case it is ever found by spacefaring aliens. More recently, NASA engineers encoded a binary message on the Perseverance rover’s parachute that read, “Dare Mighty Things.”
For the Artemis 1 mission to the Moon, NASA stuck to a lunar theme. The Orion capsule had five hidden messages placed around the crew cabin, NASA revealed in a press release on Saturday.
Binary code
Image: NASA
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Binary code for the number 18 was placed on the top of the pilot’s seat as a tribute to NASA’s Apollo program. On December 11, 1972, the Apollo 17 mission touched down on the Moon, marking the last time astronauts walked on the lunar surface.
With the Artemis program, NASA is hoping to land humans on the Moon as part of the Artemis 3 mission set to take place no earlier than 2025. The number 18 symbolizes humanity’s return to the Moon following Apollo 17.
Fly Me to the Moon
Image: NASA
On the right side of the Orion spacecraft, the letters CBAGF are written below one of the windows. The letters symbolize Frank Sinatra’s song, “Fly Me to the Moon,” representing the musical notes of the familiar tune.
A tribute cardinal
Image: NASA
NASA placed an image of a cardinal above the window to the right of Orion’s pilot seat as a tribute to Mark Geyer, former Orion program manager, who died in 2021. Geyer was a devout St. Louis Cardinals fan, according to NASA.
Code for Charlie
Image: NASA
The space agency also paid tribute to the life of former Orion Deputy Program Manager Charlie Lundquist, who died in 2020.
NASA included the morse code for “Charlie” to recognize the role that Lundquist played in the development of Orion.
European cooperation
Image: NASA
NASA recognized the cooperation of its partners from the European Space Agency who developed the service module for the Orion spacecraft.
In front of the pilot’s seat, the space agency included the country codes of each country that took part in developing the spacecraft, including the United States, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, and The Netherlands.
More: Orion Splashes Down in Pacific, Ending NASA’s Historic Artemis 1 Moon Mission
Enlarge / NASA will need new spacesuits for the Artemis Program. Shown here is Buzz Aldrin, during Apollo 11.
NASA
With the successful conclusion of the Artemis I mission, NASA has taken a big step toward returning humans to the Moon. But a big rocket and a deep-space capable capsule are only the beginning of the new technologies needed for lunar surface operations.
Most notably, there’s the lander. Much attention has been given to this component of the program, especially after NASA selected SpaceX’s large Starship vehicle to fulfill that role in April 2021. Starship will rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit and ferry astronauts down to and up from the Moon. With Orion and the Space Launch System rocket having completed a critical flight test, Starship is now on the clock as NASA works toward a lunar landing later this decade.
But just as astronauts cannot go down to the Moon without Starship, they also cannot go outside on the lunar surface without new spacesuits.
In June, NASA announced that it would partner with two industry groups, one led by Axiom Space and another by Collins Aerospace, to develop spacesuits for both the Moon and spacewalking in low-Earth orbit. In September, the space agency said that Axiom would develop Artemis Moonwalking suits. Last week, NASA said Collins would develop suits for the International Space Station and other in-space applications.
These will be NASA’s first new spacesuits in decades, and as they are mini-spacecraft, the new suits are complex machines. The spacesuit design must include life support, pressure garments, avionics, and more in a self-contained unit. Developing a suit for the lunar environment will be especially challenging because it has not been done for five decades, and the Apollo astronauts had to contend with a lot of gritty dust on the lunar surface.
To get a sense of how this work is progressing, Ars recently spoke with Chris Hansen, who is the deputy program manager for spacesuits and lunar vehicles for NASA.
“We think they’re doing great,” Hansen said of Axiom and Collins. “These companies are so motivated and excited about these projects, they have invested a lot of their own money into the suits.”
Each company has been able to fully leverage the design and research that NASA put into the internal development of a next-generation spacesuit known as “xEMU.” NASA invested $420 million into this research and development effort over more than a decade. “They’ve been able to use it heavily in their designs,” Hansen said of the companies and the xEMU prototype.
NASA has set a target for the Artemis III mission to land two humans on the Moon by 2025. While that doesn’t seem reasonable—Artemis II will more likely fly a crew around the Moon that year, setting up Artemis III later this decade—Hansen said Axiom is still working toward that goal.
To that end, the company is scheduled to deliver two flight-ready suits to NASA by mid- or late 2025, Hansen said. While Axiom will be required to demonstrate the suits in a flight-like environment, most likely a pressure chamber on Earth, its first flight test will likely occur on the Moon.
“Artemis III will be the demonstration mission,” Hansen said. “We’re holding our contractors to their time schedules. I’m very confident that they’ll make these schedules that we’re talking about.”
Orion’s successful splashdown Sunday afternoon (Dec. 11) returned some critical components needed for NASA’s Artemis 2 moon mission, which is scheduled to launch 2024 — but it may be tough for the agency to hit that target.
Artemis 1, NASA’s first in a series of missions designed to return humanity to the lunar surface, is now complete. On Sunday at 12:40 p.m. EST (1740 GMT), an uncrewed Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, wrapping up its 25.5-day mission to lunar orbit and back.
Artemis 1 launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida on Nov. 16 on the debut mission of the agency’s huge new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Though the premiere of SLS was delayed several times beyond its originally targeted launch date of 2017, the rocket performed perfectly in delivering the Orion spacecraft to Earth orbit.
In photos: Artemis 1 launch: Amazing views of NASA’s moon rocket debut More: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission: Live updates
With Artemis 1 now in the books, public focus is quickly shifting to the program’s next phase: crewed flight. But that can’t happen until several pieces fall into place — namely, a completely assembled spacecraft and launch vehicle. While NASA engineers and contractors have been busy constructing various elements of the SLS that will launch Artemis 2, key components for the mission’s Orion capsule are being reused from Artemis 1 and must first undergo a series of post-flight validation tests before being installed on the new spacecraft. And that’s going to take some time.
NASA’s decision to reuse some of Orion’s flight hardware was made at a time when Artemis 1 was still known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), and the schedule for SLS placed a full three years between the first two launches. A 2017 NASA blog (opens in new tab) post mentions recycling Orion’s hardware, stating, “NASA is reusing avionics boxes from the Orion EM-1 crew module for the next flight. Avionics and electrical systems provide the ‘nervous system’ of launch vehicles and spacecraft, linking diverse systems into a functioning whole.”
Artemis 2, or Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2), as it was called at the time, was originally slated to fly on an SLS Block 1B rocket, a larger upgraded version of the SLS used for Artemis 1, which replaces the vehicle’s Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) with the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS). The three-year gap between EM-1 and EM-2 was meant to allow time for upgrades to the SLS mobile launch platform (MLP) to support the taller SLS Block 1B. Comparatively, NASA’s estimated timeline to remove, refurbish and reinstall Orion’s avionics hardware was not expected to affect the launch schedule.
By 2018, however, NASA funding appropriations from Congress and agency attempts to quicken SLS’ launch cadence led to the decision to construct a second MLP to support the rocket’s larger configurations. This move abandoned plans to upgrade the existing MLP, leaving it capable of only launching the SLS Block 1. In turn, the first three flights of SLS were changed to fly in the Block 1 configuration. While this shortened the lull between missions, it also ended up putting a magnifying glass over the decision to reuse some of Orion’s avionics.
Related:Artemis 1 moon rocket, NASA’s most powerful ever, aced its debut launch
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis 1 flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)
According to a November 2022 report (opens in new tab) from the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG), “[NASA’s] Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate considers the non-core avionics reuse to be the primary critical path for the Artemis 2 mission, with total preparation work between missions to take about 27 months.” “Critical path” the report explains, “is the sequence of tasks that determines the minimum duration of time needed to complete a project.” In short, Artemis 2 can only launch as soon as the most time-consuming task on engineers’ checklists is complete. That task will likely be the processing and reinstallation of Artemis 1 hardware.
“Non-core,” in this case, refers to a subset of hardware aboard Orion, as opposed to “core” avionics, and helps differentiate between some of what will and won’t be reused from the spacecraft’s first flight. “There are connectors that can be demated,” explained one NASA engineer to Space.com. So, the avionics boxes’ removal and installation on the Artemis 2 Orion capsule will be more akin to unplugging your home office to transfer from one room to another than to ripping up your drywall to rewire your house. But before those components can be installed in the Orion for Artemis 2, they need to be tested.
With Artemis 1 complete and Orion back on Earth, technicians will now study the spacecraft and its systems to determine how well it performed in flight. Many on-board experiments for Artemis 1 focused on radiation exposure, including the mannequins Helga and Zohar as part of the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE). Nearly a dozen other active and passive dosimeters are scattered throughout the capsule as well.
Radiation in space can have significant impacts on flight systems as well as biological ones. Therefore, extensive efforts are taken when designing a spacecraft to protect crews and hardware from exposure. Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has studied the effects of microgravity and radiation on the human body for more than 20 years. However, exposure levels in deep space and around the moon are much higher than in low Earth orbit (LEO), where the ISS operates.
On its maiden voyage around the moon, Orion flew farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed to carry humans, reaching a distance of 268,563 miles (432,210 kilometers) on Nov. 28, beating the record set by the Apollo 13 mission by nearly 20,000 miles (32,186 km). Barring any off-nominal findings from the Artemis 1 flight data, NASA plans to fly four astronauts aboard Artemis 2 on a trajectory around the moon, reaching a maximum altitude of 5,523 miles (8,889 km) above the Moon’s surface, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). That would place them second behind the Apollo 13 astronauts, who got farther from Earth while troubleshooting a near-disaster that prevented them from landing on the moon as planned.
Unlike Artemis 1, the crew aboard Orion on Artemis 2 won’t technically enter lunar orbit. For Orion’s first excursion to the moon, the SLS core stage launched the spacecraft and the ICPS into Earth orbit, and the ICPS performed a translunar injection burn to put Orion on course for the moon. There, Orion’s service module placed the spacecraft in a distant retrograde orbit (DRO), where it remained from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1. On Dec. 5, the capsule headed back toward Earth via a long engine burn conducted during a close lunar flyby. In total, the Artemis 1 mission lasted about 25.5 days.
The Artemis 2 crew won’t get to enjoy their mission for quite as long; Orion’s second lunar expedition is scheduled to last just over 10 days. After completing some extended laps around the Earth, the flight path for Artemis 2 puts Orion on a path to return from a lunar flyby without slowing the spacecraft’s trajectory enough to maintain a stable lunar orbit.
Related:Facts about NASA’s Artemis program
“In terms of the mission length for Artemis 2, we’re looking at a 10.5-day crewed flight test,” Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin explained in a briefing on Nov. 28. “Four astronauts will fly a one-day, highly elliptical orbit to basically shake down the life support system and perform a proximity operations demonstration with the upper stage before it is separated at a far distance from Orion. And then at the end of that one-day high Earth orbit, Orion will essentially perform a mission completion maneuver and use the service module to perform the translunar injection maneuver and put itself on a free-return trajectory — about 4.5 days out [to the moon] and about 4.5 days back. So it’ll be a little over 10 days.”
Currently, NASA is targeting sometime in 2024 for the launch of Artemis 2. However, if the clock to transfer Orion’s avionics boxes started the moment of splashdown, the 27 months estimated by NASA’s OIG to complete the task already pushes the agency’s 2024 goal into 2025. The next mission after that, Artemis 3, is not dependent on any of Artemis 2’s flight hardware. It is dependent, however, on a host of other milestones, making it unlikely that the mission, currently slated for 2025, will launch on time either.
Artemis 3 is designed to land crews on the moon’s surface — specifically, the lunar south polar region. This will require a landing system for ferrying crews to and from the lunar surface (SpaceX’s huge new Starship vehicle) and new spacesuits for astronauts to wear while performing moonwalks or cislunar extravehicular activities (EVAs). For all of these things to be ready in time for a 2025 moon landing would be a monumental feat for NASA and its partners.
NASA also plans to build a small moon-orbiting space station called Gateway as part of the Artemis program. Gateway’s timely construction hinges on a number of factors falling into place, not least of which is a rocket powerful enough to launch the station’s various modules, and also a launch tower to support that rocket. NASA selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch the first Gateway components in late 2024 but has stated the need for the SLS Block 1B and other upgraded variations to launch additional station modules and other habitation hardware needed for long-term lunar stays.
And the second MLP, designated ML-2, required to support those future SLS rockets hasn’t even begun construction yet. After Congress’ budget appropriations for a second launch tower, NASA selected Bechtel as the project’s primary contractor. Now, years later, the undertaking is still in the design and planning phases and will likely cost 2.5 times higher than originally projected, totaling nearly $1 billion and counting.
A NASA OIG report from June 2022 (opens in new tab) indicates that ML-2 will likely not be ready for operational use until the end of 2026, placing the earliest possible launch for an SLS Block 1B sometime in 2027. The report reads, in part, “as of May 2022, design work on the ML-2 was still incomplete, and Bechtel officials do not expect construction to begin until the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 at the earliest. To complete contract requirements and deliver an operational ML-2, Bechtel estimates it will need an additional $577.1 million, bringing the structure’s total projected cost to $960.1 million coupled with an October 2025 rather than March 2023 delivery date. We expect further cost increases as inevitable technical challenges arise when ML-2 construction begins.”
Related:NASA rolls Artemis 1’s huge launch tower off pad for repairs, upgrades (photos)
A view of Earth from NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft as it approached splashdown time on Dec. 11, 2022. (Image credit: NASA)
Now, a successful lunar landing on Artemis 3 may not necessarily hinge on whether or not any components of Gateway are in place in time to support the mission. In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX the agency’s Human Landing System (HLS) contract to build a lunar lander for the Artemis program, based on the company’s Starship spacecraft currently still under development. It’s worth noting that, once operational, SpaceX’s Super Heavy rocket required to launch Starship will be more powerful than SLS, cheaper and faster to produce, and will be reusable.
With some refueling along the way, Starship is also expected to be capable of reaching the moon, then return to Earth following a lunar landing, eliminating the need to transfer crew or cargo between vehicles along the way. However, NASA’s current framework for Artemis 3 still outlines a crewed Orion launch and an HLS rendezvous in lunar orbit before landing astronauts on the lunar surface. The first orbital launch attempt for SpaceX‘s Starship is expected early in 2023, but it’s unclear when the giant vehicle will be fully operational.
Even if Starship is ready by 2025, the spacesuits astronauts need to traverse the lunar surface may not be. Indeed, NASA has a bit of a spacesuit problem. The spacesuits currently used for ISS EVAs are remnants of the 1980s and ’90s, when NASA contractor ILC Dover supplied 18 EVA suits for use on the space shuttle and eventually the space station. Of those, 11 remain, and they are split between the ISS and NASA’s testing facility at the Johnson Space Center.
After the space shuttle program was canceled in 2011, ILC Dover provided the remaining suits with some major upgrades, which allowed them to be stored on orbit aboard the ISS long-term, but a NASA OIG report (opens in new tab) from 2017 paints a bleak picture for a spacesuit development timeline favorable to the ISS or Artemis. The report raises the concern that current suit inventory may be inadequate to last through the space station’s life expectancy. “NASA will be challenged to continue to support ISS needs with the current fleet of EMUs [(extravehicular mobility units)] through 2024, a challenge that will escalate significantly if station operations are extended to 2028,” the report reads. NASA officials have repeatedly stated throughout the past year their hope to fly the ISS until at least 2030.
An entirely different spacesuit is needed for the Artemis missions, however. A 2018 NASA OIG report (opens in new tab) points out that even new EVA suits for the ISS wouldn’t “offer the mobility, durability, or functionality planetary or cislunar missions will require.” The report also stresses the need for NASA to test new EVA suits in microgravity or “accept higher levels of risk during future exploration missions, potentially impacting astronaut health and safety as well as mission success.”
At the time of that report, the schedule for ISS technology demonstrations projected new EVA suit tests to take place between 2024 and 2025. For Artemis, the only opportunity to test a spacesuit in lunar orbit before an Artemis 3 landing attempt will be during Artemis 2, and another OIG report (opens in new tab), this one from last year, cast further skepticism on NASA’s ability to keep to the agency’s stated timeline. NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMU), as the suits are known, spent a slow decade in development, and burned through over a billion dollars, the report indicates.
“The Agency faces significant challenges in meeting this goal,” the report reads. “This schedule includes approximately a 20-month delay in delivery for the planned design, verification, and testing suit, two qualification suits, an ISS Demo suit, and two lunar flight suits. These delays — attributable to funding shortfalls, COVID-19 impacts, and technical challenges — have left no schedule margin for delivery of the two flight-ready xEMUs. Given the integration requirements, the suits would not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest.”
NASA took the OIG report’s findings seriously and made the decision to outsource the efforts in order to expedite suit readiness for both the ISS and Artemis. In June of this year, NASA tapped companies Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace (working with ILC Dover) to develop new spacesuits, and in September selected Axiom to provide the suits astronauts will wear on the surface of the moon. Axiom is also seeking to install its own module on the ISS by 2024, to serve as the core of a new private space station, and operated Ax-1 in April of this year, the first of a handful of planned privately crewed missions to the ISS. So it is feasible the company could test its spacesuit in the microgravity environment available in LEO, if not on Artemis 2.
Publicly, NASA is still voicing confidence in a 2024 launch for Artemis 2, but with the agency’s own internal documents suggesting otherwise, it may only be a matter of time before that messaging is changed. So, for now, everyone who was awestruck by the sight of Artemis 1 leaving the planet in a blaze of light will have to practice patience while waiting for the next SLS to light up the sky.
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Enlarge / NASA’s Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean after a successful mission on Sunday.
NASA
The first step of a journey is often the most difficult one. So it is worth pausing a moment to celebrate that NASA just took the essential first step on the path toward establishing a permanent presence in deep space.
Amidst a backdrop of blue skies and white clouds, the Orion spacecraft dropped into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday a few hundred kilometers off the Baja Peninsula. This brought to a close the Artemis I mission, a 25.5-day spaceflight that demonstrated NASA is just about ready to begin flying humans back into deep space once again.
This has not happened in half a century. At times, it seemed like it might never happen again. But now, it is most definitely happening.
NASA’s progress back toward the Moon, and one day potentially Mars, has been at times lethargic. The political process that led NASA to this point in recent decades was messy and motivated by parochial pork projects. But on Sunday there could be no denying that this process has brought NASA, the United States, and dozens of other nations participating in the Artemis Program to the point where its human deep space exploration program is a very, very real thing.
It has been a long time coming.
False starts
The final Apollo mission ended this month, in 1972. For a time, US presidents and the space agency were content to focus human exploration on low-Earth orbit, with development of the US space shuttle and plans for building a large space station.
Eventually, however, some people started to get restless. On the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, in 1989, President George Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, a long-range commitment toward the human exploration of deep space. The plan was to complete a space station and then, by the turn of the century, have humans on the Moon starting to build a base there.
What happened next was not particularly pretty. Some people at NASA, including administrator Dick Truly, were not entirely on board with Bush’s idea. They worried that the lunar plans would disrupt the space station. Infamously, NASA conducted and leaked a 90-day study that suggested Bush’s plan might cost half a trillion dollars or more. As Congress had no appetite for such a budget, the Moon plans died.
They would lay dormant for nearly a decade and a half before President George W. Bush resurrected them. Like his father, Bush envisioned a bold plan to send humans back to the Moon, where they would learn how to operate in deep space and then go on to Mars. This became the Constellation program.
This vision was well received in the aerospace community, but then three bad things happened. NASA’s new administrator, Mike Griffin, picked a large and particularly expensive architecture—the Ares I and Ares V rockets—to get humans back to the Moon. International partners were largely ignored. And then neither the president or Congress fought for the full funding the program would need to survive.
Constellation was years late, and far over budget, when President Obama canceled it in 2010. At that point Congress stepped in and saved the Orion spacecraft, which had been started in 2005, and set the design for a new rocket, the Space Launch System. The development of these programs meandered along for much of the last decade, consuming in excess of $30 billion, with no clear destination. That changed in late 2017 when Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA would land humans on the Moon.
This led to the formulation of the Artemis Program in 2018 and 2019. It has been far from perfect, but more than functional. Moreover, it built upon past failures. Whereas the Constellation program had a purely government-led architecture, Artemis has leaned increasingly on commercial space. Artemis also sought to build in international cooperation from the beginning, through a series of bilateral agreements known as the Artemis Accords. And as of this year, the program is fully funded.
“Fifty years ago we went as a country, as a government,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Sunday, after Orion’s landing. “Today we go not only with international partners, but commercial partners. It is the beginning of the new beginning.”
A rare alignment
Myriad technical challenges remain ahead for the Artemis Program, including development and testing of SpaceX’s complex Starship lunar lander, and Axiom’s work on spacesuits capable of operating on the lunar environment. Both of these contracts, awarded in 2021 and 2022 respectively, probably will require time and patience to reach fruition.
None of this is going to happen fast. Artemis II is unlikely to fly before the year 2025, and the actual lunar landing mission will not come until later this decade, perhaps in 2027 or 2028.
But taking the long view is instructive here. The two other post-Apollo deep space programs failed because they lacked political support, funding, or both. Artemis is different. It has both political support and funding. Remarkably, virtually every aspect of the space policy firmament—the White House, Congress, international allies, traditional aerospace, commercial space, and the space advocacy community—have fallen into alignment on the broad goals of Artemis.
That kind of support has not existed for a program like this since the 1960s, and Apollo. And that fervor really only crystallized in the crucible of national tragedy that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There has been nothing akin to that unifying event for Artemis. Rather, elements of this program have had to survive across four different and very much opposed administrations, from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden.
“You see a nation riven with partisanship,” Nelson said. “That doesn’t exist here. NASA is non-partisan. Rs and Ds alike come together to support us.”
Amazingly, then, the politics are sorted. Now it comes down to technical execution. Engineering is hard, but at least it is based on reason, unlike space policy. Artemis I has been shown to be a technical success. Do you think SpaceX cannot make a rocket to land on the Moon? Or Axiom, working with a NASA design, cannot manufacture spacesuits to keep the lunar dust at bay?
Certainly, they can, and they will.
A lack of coordination?
NASA is also taking steps to address one of the last major issues with Artemis, a lack of coordination. Johnson Space Center in Houston is responsible for Orion, and training the astronauts. Marshall Space Flight Center in northern Alabama builds the SLS rocket and manages development of the lunar lander. Kennedy Space Center launches the missions.
As a result, several organizations and outside advisors have criticized NASA for the lack of a “program office” to coordinate the myriad elements that will go into Artemis mission.
For example, NASA’s Office of Inspector General recently stated, “Unlike the first crewed missions to the lunar surface under the Apollo Program, NASA has no overall NASA program manager overseeing the Artemis missions or a main contractor, as in the Space Shuttle Program, serving as a lead systems integrator.” The concern is that, without such an official, the program would lack cohesion and see in-fighting for influence.
However, such an office is indeed coming. Mike Sarafin, the senior NASA engineer who successfully served as mission manager for Artemis I, will become the “mission development manager” for Artemis III. In an interview, Sarafin said an Artemis Program Office remains in the development stages, and he did not want to discuss details yet. However, it sounds like its role will involve overall planning and coordination for the complex flight to the surface of the Moon—bringing together the SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft, and Human Landing System programs under one roof.
Sarafin seems like an excellent choice to lead Artemis III development. He guided the Artemis I mission through myriad delays, overcoming challenges with liquid hydrogen fueling, and not one but two hurricanes in the weeks before the mission finally took flight. And yet, through all of this, he and his team brought home a spacecraft in great condition, meeting or exceeding all of its goals by splashing down on Sunday.
Another criticism of Artemis is that it simply repeats the Apollo Program. If Artemis fizzles out after a few missions, then such criticism is merited. However, give the broad base of support for what is happening today, NASA now has a credible pathway forward to not just exploring the South Pole of the Moon, but learning to live and work in deep space, and eventually sending humans deeper into the Solar System.
“There we did the impossible, making it possible,” Nelson said of Apollo. “Now, we are doing that again but for a different purpose. This time we go back to the Moon to learn to live, to work, to create.”
The greatest success imaginable for Artemis would be that it has a permanence not enjoyed during the Apollo era. In light of this weekend’s success, such a future is there for the taking for NASA. They and their partners just need to continue to execute as brilliantly as they did over the last month.
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The Artemis I mission — a 25½-day uncrewed test flight around the moon meant to pave the way for future astronaut missions — came to a momentous end as NASA’s Orion spacecraft made a successful ocean splashdown Sunday.
The spacecraft finished the final stretch of its journey, closing in on the thick inner layer of Earth’s atmosphere after traversing 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers) between the moon and Earth. It splashed down at 12:40 p.m. ET Sunday in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja California.
This final step was among the most important and dangerous legs of the mission.
But after splashing down, Rob Navias, the NASA commentator who led Sunday’s broadcast, called the reentry process “textbook.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Sunday. “This is an extraordinary day.”
The capsule is now bobbing in the Pacific Ocean, where it will remain until nearly 3 p.m. ET as NASA collects additional data and runs through some tests. That process, much like the rest of the mission, aims to ensure the Orion spacecraft is ready to fly astronauts.
“We’re testing all of the heat that has come and been generated on the capsule. We want to make sure that we characterize how that’s going to affect the interior of the capsule,” NASA flight director Judd Frieling told reporters last week.
A fleet of recovery vehicles — including boats, a helicopter and a US Naval ship called the USS Portland — are waiting nearby.
The spacecraft was traveling about 32 times the speed of sound (24,850 miles per hour or nearly 40,000 kilometers per hour) as it hit the air — so fast that compression waves caused the outside of the vehicle to heat to about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).
“The next big test is the heat shield,” Nelson had told CNN in a phone interview Thursday, referring to the barrier designed to protect the Orion capsule from the excruciating physics of reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.
The extreme heat also caused air molecules to ionize, creating a buildupof plasma that caused a 5½-minute communications blackout, according to Artemis I flight director Judd Frieling.
INTERACTIVE: Trace the path Artemis I will take around the moon and back
As the capsule reached around 200,000 feet (61,000 meters) above the Earth’s surface, it performed a roll maneuver that briefly sent the capsule back upward — sort of like skipping a rock across the surface of a lake.
There are a couple of reasons for using the skip maneuver.
“Skip entry gives us a consistent landing site that supports astronaut safety because it allows teams on the ground to better and faster coordinate recovery efforts,” said Joe Bomba, Lockheed Martin’s Orion aerosciences aerothermal lead, in a statement. Lockheed is NASA’s primary contractor for the Orion spacecraft.
“By dividing the heat and force of reentry into two events, skip entry also offers benefits like lessening the g-forces astronauts are subject to,” according to Lockheed, referring to the crushing forces humans experience during spaceflight.
Another communications blackout lasting about three minutes followed the skip maneuver.
As it embarked on its final descent, the capsule slowed down drastically, shedding thousands of miles per hour in speed until its parachutes deploy. By the time it splashed down, Orion was traveling about 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour).
While there were no astronauts on this test mission — just a few mannequins equipped to gather data and a Snoopy doll — Nelson, the NASA chief, has stressed the importance of demonstrating that the capsule can make a safe return.
The space agency’s plans are to parlay the Artemis moon missions into a program that will send astronauts to Mars, a journey that will have a much faster and more daring reentry process.
Orion traveled roughly 1.3 million miles (2 million kilometers) during this mission on a path that swung out to a distant lunar orbit, carrying the capsule farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans has ever traveled.
A secondary goal of this mission was for Orion’s service module, a cylindrical attachment at the bottom of the spacecraft, to deploy 10 small satellites. But at least four of those satellites failed after being jettisoned into orbit, including a miniature lunar lander developed in Japan and one of NASA’s own payload that was intended to be one of the first tiny satellites to explore interplanetary space.
On its trip, the spacecraft captured stunning pictures of Earth and, during two close flybys, images of the lunar surface and a mesmerizing “Earth rise.”
Nelson said if he had to give the Artemis I mission a letter grade so far, it would be an A.
“Not an A-plus, simply because we expect things to go wrong. And the good news is that when they do go wrong, NASA knows how to fix them,” Nelson said. But “if I’m aschoolteacher, I would give it an A-plus.”
With the success of the Artemis I mission, NASA will now dive into the data collected on this flight and look to choose a crew for the Artemis II mission, which could take off in 2024.
Artemis II will aim to send astronauts on a similar trajectory as Artemis I, flying around the moon but not landing on its surface.
The Artemis III mission, currentlyslated for a 2025 launch, is expectedto put boots back on the moon, and NASA officials have said it will include the first woman and first person of color to achieve such a milestone.
Closing out a 25-day voyage around the moon, NASA’s Artemis 1 spacecraft fell back to Earth Sunday, making a 25,000-mph re-entry Sunday that subjected the unpiloted capsule to a hellish 5,000-degree inferno before splashdown off Baja California.
In an unexpected but richly-symbolic coincidence, the end of the Artemis 1 mission comes 50 years to the day after the final Apollo moon landing in 1972.
Testing the Orion capsule’s 16.5-foot-wide Apollo-derived Avcoat heat shield was the top priority of the Artemis 1 mission, “and it is our priority-one objective for a reason,” said mission manager Mike Safarin.
“There is no arc jet or aerothermal facility here on Earth capable of replicating hypersonic reentry with a heat shield of this size,” he said. “And it is a brand new heat shield design, and it is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and (future astronauts) … so the heat shield needs to work.”
On November 28, halfway through the Artemis 1 mission, a camera on one of the Orion spacecraft’s four solar wings captured this iconic view of the blue-and-white Earth and moon (at lower right).
NASA
Launched Nov. 16 on the maiden flight of NASA’s huge new Space Launch System rocket, the unpiloted Orion capsule was propelled out of Earth orbit and on to the moon for an exhaustive series of tests, putting its propulsion, navigation, power and computer systems through their paces in the deep space environment.
While flight controllers ran into still-unexplained glitches with its power system, initial “funnies” with its star trackers and degraded performance from a phased array antenna, the Orion spacecraft and its European Space Agency-built service module worked well overall, achieving virtually all of their major objectives to this point.
“We’ve collected an immense amount of data characterizing system performance from the power system, the propulsion, GNC (guidance, navigation and control) and so far, the flight control team has downlinked to over 140 gigabytes of engineering and imagery data,” said Jim Geffre, the Orion vehicle integration manager.
The Orion spacecraft followed a trajectory that included a close lunar flyby and a subsequent engine firing to reach the planned “distant retrograde orbit” around the moon. After a half lap, the spacecraft’s engine fired twice more to set up a second close flyby of the moon that, in turn, sent the capsule on its way back to Earth for a Sunday splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.
NASA
The team is already analyzing that data “to help not only understand the performance on Artemis 1, but play forward for all subsequent missions,” he said.
If all goes well, NASA plans to follow the Artemis 1 mission by sending four astronauts around the moon in the program’s second flight — Artemis 2 — in 2024. The first moon-landing would follow in the 2025-26 timeframe when NASA says the first woman and the next man will set foot on the lunar surface.
The unpiloted Artemis 1 capsule flew through half of an orbit around the moon that carried it farther from Earth — 268,563 miles — than any previous human-rated spacecraft. Two critical firings of its main engine set up a low-altitude lunar flyby last Monday that, in turn, put the craft on course for splashdown Sunday.
NASA originally planned to bring the ship down west of San Diego, but a predicted cold front bringing higher winds and rougher seas prompted mission managers to move the landing site south by about 350 miles. Splashdown came south of Guadalupe Island some 200 miles west of Baja California.
NASA and Navy recovery crews aboard the USS Portland, an amphibious dock vessel, were standing by within sight of splashdown, ready to secure the craft and tow it into the Navy ship’s flooded “well deck.”
Once the deck’s gates are closed, the water will be pumped out, leaving Orion on a custom stand, protecting its heat shield, for the trip back to Naval Base San Diego.
But first, the recovery team will stand by for up to two hours while engineers collect data on how the heat of re-entry soaked into the spacecraft and what effects, if any, that might have on the crew cabin temperature.
“We are on track to have a fully successful mission with some bonus objectives that we’ve achieved along the way,” Sarafin said. “And on entry day, we will realize our priority one objective, which is to demonstrate the vehicle at lunar re-entry conditions.”
William Harwood
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”
NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will return to Earth on Sunday (Dec. 11) after nearly a month in space, and you can watch the homecoming live.
Artemis 1’s uncrewed Orion capsule is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California Sunday around 12:40 p.m. EST (1740 GMT).
You can watch live coverage of Orion’s reentry here at Space.com courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency (opens in new tab). Coverage will start at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT).
In photos: Artemis 1 launch: Amazing views of NASA’s moon rocket debut More: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission: Live updates
Orion launched atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Nov. 16, kicking off the highly anticipated Artemis 1 mission.
The capsule slipped into lunar orbit on Nov. 25, then left on Dec. 1. Four days later, Orion fired its main engine in a 3.5-minute burn — its longest of the mission — during a close lunar flyby to head back to its home planet.
The 25.5-day-long Artemis 1 mission will end on Sunday, 50 years to the day that Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt touched down on the lunar surface. The duo departed on Dec. 14, 1972, and no humans have been back to the moon since.
If all goes according to plan, Orion will hit Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean at about 12:20 p.m. EST (1720 GMT) on Sunday while traveling 25,000 mph (40,000 kph). This tremendous speed will generate a lot of friction; Orion’s heat shield will have to handle temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius) — about half as hot as the surface of the sun.
This NASA graphic shows the Artemis 1 Orion capsule’s skip reentry path for Dec. 11, 2022. (Image credit: NASA TV)
The capsule will bounce off the upper atmosphere briefly and then come back down, like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond. After this skip, Orion will descend through the atmosphere under parachutes, splashing down off the coast of Baja California at about 12:40 p.m. EST (1740 GMT). A U.S. Navy ship, the USS Portland, will be waiting in the vicinity to retrieve the spacecraft and haul it to port in San Diego.
Reentry will begin over the open Pacific, far off the coast of South America, and Orion will head north from there. The remoteness of the capsule’s path, combined with the timing — that is, during daylight hours — make this reentry a very hard target for observers on the ground, even those close to the splashdown site.
“Is anybody going to be able to see that off Baja?” Artemis 1 Flight Director Judd Frieling said during a press conference on Thursday (Dec. 8). “There’s always a chance, but we’re pretty far off the coast there, so I doubt it — unless you’re out there in a boat, 100 miles offshore or so.”
Nearby observers may get aural evidence that reentry has begun, however.
“You’re more likely to hear the sonic boom as the vehicle approaches than anything,” Artemis 1 Mission Manager Mike Sarafin said during Thursday’s briefing.
The reentry path for NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion capsule for its return to Earth on Dec. 11, 2022. (Image credit: NASA)
Artemis 1 is a shakeout cruise for the SLS, Orion and their associated ground systems. If everything goes well on Sunday, NASA can begin gearing up for Artemis 2, which will send astronauts around the moon in 2024.
Artemis 3 is scheduled to put boots down near the lunar south pole in 2025 or 2026. Future missions in NASA’s Artemis program will build a research base in that region, which is thought to be rich in water ice.
The agency wants to have to this outpost up and running by the end of the 2020s. NASA plans to use the knowledge gained from these moon efforts to help get astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).