NASA Is Treating Orion's Heat Shield Problems As a Secret (arstechnica.com) 25
Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports: For those who follow NASA's human spaceflight program, a burning question for the last year-and-a-half has been what caused the Orion spacecraft's heat shield to crack and chip away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late 2022. Multiple NASA officials said Monday they now know the answer, but they're not telling. Instead, agency officials want to wait until more reviews are done to determine what this means for Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft's first crew mission around the Moon, officially scheduled for launch in September 2025.
"We have gotten to a root cause," said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars program office, in response to a question from Ars on Monday at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium. "We are having conversations within the agency to make sure that we have a good understanding of not only what's going on with the heat shield, but also next steps and how that actually applies to the course that we take for Artemis II," she said. "And we'll be in a position to be able to share where we are with that hopefully before the end of the year."
While the space program is far down the list of most voters' priorities, this means a decision and announcement on what will happen with Artemis II won't come until the post-election lame duck period in the waning weeks of the Biden administration, and likely Bill Nelson's tenure as NASA administrator. This is several months later than NASA officials expected to make a decision. The question here is whether NASA managers decide it is safe enough to fly the Orion heat shield as-is on Artemis II, or if it is too risky with people onboard. Artemis II will be a 10-day mission taking its four-person crew on a path around the far side of the Moon, then back to Earth. This will be the first time people travel to such distances since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago.
"We have gotten to a root cause," said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars program office, in response to a question from Ars on Monday at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium. "We are having conversations within the agency to make sure that we have a good understanding of not only what's going on with the heat shield, but also next steps and how that actually applies to the course that we take for Artemis II," she said. "And we'll be in a position to be able to share where we are with that hopefully before the end of the year."
While the space program is far down the list of most voters' priorities, this means a decision and announcement on what will happen with Artemis II won't come until the post-election lame duck period in the waning weeks of the Biden administration, and likely Bill Nelson's tenure as NASA administrator. This is several months later than NASA officials expected to make a decision. The question here is whether NASA managers decide it is safe enough to fly the Orion heat shield as-is on Artemis II, or if it is too risky with people onboard. Artemis II will be a 10-day mission taking its four-person crew on a path around the far side of the Moon, then back to Earth. This will be the first time people travel to such distances since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago.
Burning question? (Score:3, Funny)
Leadership (Score:2)
Re:Leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe they don't want to put out an unfinished report and have to deal with the flood of comments from a million dipshits who fancy themselves to be engineers because they did a google search.
Re:Leadership (Score:4, Funny)
How does a finished report solve that ? :)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if it comes during the lame duck period, the comments can just be ignored.
Re: (Score:2)
who fancy themselves to be engineers because they did a google search.
You don't need to be so polite; we all know that type get their info from their twitter feed.
Re: (Score:3)
It's NASA (Score:3)
The rule is, it was aliens.
It's always aliens.
Not the pet-eating kind. Maaaaybe.
Re: (Score:2)
It's always aliens.
It's a garbage pod.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a garbage pod.
I actually re-watched that episode a couple of nights ago.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a great one!
Re: (Score:1)
Is there a fallback plan? (Score:2)
Is there a fallback plan? I'm pretty sure the Orion capsule doesn't have even half the delta-v required to go from lunar transfer orbit to an ISS orbit, and AFAIK, Crew Dragon can't make it down from a lunar transfer orbit. Is there some happy medium where Crew Dragon could survive reentry after getting Orion into a somewhat less elliptical Earth orbit to dock with it?
Re: Is there a fallback plan? (Score:1)
It has only cost $30B so far to get it where it is today, non-functional. In comparison SpaceX does crewed missions for $50M/seat. I would say to let Boeing, Airbus and Lockheed go out of business, only propose fixed cost contracts at the rates that SpaceX and the other newer space companies do it.
Oh no! (Score:4, Funny)
How ever will the tech writers get to play out their dreams of being middle-management busybodies who contribute nothing but noise if NASA doesn't continually feed them unfinished reports?
Damn those engineers for doing their jobs and not feeding the 24/7 news cycle!
The root cause is that Orion is garbage. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It has taken far longer for the Constellation/successors to not fly successfully than it took for the Space Shuttle to go from drawing-board to routine flights. And this is with the post-shuttle program having all of the shuttle program's documentation and even some of the engineers on-hand.
Re: (Score:2)
Just hire SpaceX (Score:2)
Given that NASA's plan of record is to land astronauts on the moon in a SpaceX Starship, just put the astronauts on the Starship when it leaves Earth.
No need for Orion. If Starship isn't yet mature enough to put people on, put the astronauts on a Dragon and have them meet the Starship in orbit.
Either way - no need for Orion or SLS. And it'll save 70% of the cost of each flight. Or more.
Orion and SLS are a welfare program for second-rate space engineers. Have been for a while.