Zitat Orion hatch ‘blemish’ delays launch day rehearsal for Artemis 2 astronauts
December 4, 2025
The four astronauts who are to fly a loop around the Moon next year on the Artemis 2 mission were supposed to board their Orion capsule on Nov. 19 for a launch day rehearsal, but a problem with the spacecraft’s hatch delayed the practice run, NASA told Spaceflight Now.
“We were supposed to be at Kennedy Space Center for the Countdown Demonstration Test, but we have delayed that test into December,” Artemis 2 Commander Reid Wiseman said in a video, shared Nov. 24 on social media. “We spent the bulk of this week sitting down with our flight control experts and our teams here at Johnson [Space Center] just working through all the questions that we have leading up to today.”
Similar countdown practice runs for astronauts and launch controllers took place during the Apollo and Shuttle programs and continue to this day for SpaceX Crew Dragon crews. For those rehearsals, the astronauts boarded their spaceships at the launch pad, but the Artemis 2 plan is different.
For the Countdown Demonstration Test, or CDT, the Artemis 2 astronauts will walkout out of crew quarters at the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkouts Building in bright-orange pressure suits before traveling to the Vehicle Assembly Building, where their Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket are being readied for flight in High Bay 3. Once inside the cavernous building they will ride the launch pad elevator to the 274-foot level, cross the crew access arm and strap in aboard the Orion spacecraft. Meanwhile in the adjacent Launch Control Center, Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson will run her team through the final hours of the countdown, before stopping the clock in its final moments. The astronauts will then practice an emergency evacuation from the capsule.
Spaceflight Now earlier reported that the countdown rehearsal was delayed by an issue with the Orion capsule. A NASA spokesperson confirmed that in a statement to Spaceflight Now on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
“Prior to the countdown demonstration test, the agency had planned to conduct a day of launch closeout demonstration. This demonstration was paused when a blemish was found on the crew module thermal barrier, preventing hatch closure until it could be addressed,” the statement read. “A repair was completed on Nov. 18 allowing the closeout demo to successfully complete on Nov. 19. To allow lessons learned from the closeout demo to be incorporated into the planning for the countdown demonstration test, the decision was made to proceed into water servicing next and place the countdown demonstration test after this servicing completes.”
It was not clear from the NASA statement how a ‘blemish’ prevented the closure of the hatch and NASA would not say exactly when the countdown rehearsal will take place.
Declining to provide further details, the space agency spokesperson said: “NASA remains on track to launch Artemis 2 no later than April 2026 with opportunities to potentially launch as soon as February.”
“It won’t affect our launch schedule, which is fantastic,” said Wiseman in the Nov. 24 video. “Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team at Kennedy are working hard, getting this vehicle ready for us to go.”
The CDT is one of the big milestones outlined by NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems before the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are rolled out from the VAB to the pad at Launch Complex 39B.
Once there, final-prelaunch checkouts will take place over a roughly 18-day work period. That work includes the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), during which teams will load more than 700,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen onto the rocket in the same manner that will be done on launch day.
Wir haben also mal wieder so ein drei-gehörntes Warten vor uns ("Trifecta" paßt nicht wirklich, und "Trilemma" auch nicht): Was geht zuerst über die Bühne? - Der Start der ersten privaten Raumstation, Haven-1? - Flug 12 des Starship (nachdem es die Startstufe jüngst bei der Betankung zerlegt hat)? - Der erste neue bemannte Mondflug?
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Sawyer Merritt@SawyerMerritt NEWS: Today, Trump signed an executive order committing the United States to return to the Moon by 2028, build a lunar outpost by 2030 and prepare for the journey to Mars.
Everything in the Executive Order: • Return Americans to the Moon by 2028 • Begin building a permanent lunar outpost by 2030 • Make U.S. space superiority a core national priority • Expand commercial launch, lower costs, increase cadence • Develop next-gen space-based missile defense by 2028 • Detect and counter threats in LEO and cislunar space • Rapidly modernize national security space architecture • Deepen allied cooperation in space security • Grow the U.S. commercial space economy • Target $50B+ in new space investment by 2028 • Support a commercial successor to the ISS by 2030 • Enable space nuclear power for lunar and orbital missions • Improve space weather forecasting • Lead on space traffic management & debris mitigation
Zitat Eric Berger@SciGuySpace Based upon information from a couple of people, as of last night NASA is still working toward the Feb. 5-11 launch window for Artemis II. A big tell will be whether NASA rolls the rocket to the pad about 10 days from now. 2:37 PM · Jan 7, 2026
Zitat Eric Berger@SciGuySpace I attended a half-day meeting at NASA HQ on Thursday that provided a detailed review of Orion’s heat shield status. Here is my report: 6:19 PM · Jan 9, 2026
Zitat This week, NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, said he has “full confidence” in the space agency’s plans to use the existing heat shield to protect the Orion spacecraft during its upcoming lunar mission.
Isaacman made the determination after briefings with senior leaders at the agency and a half-day review of NASA’s findings with outside experts.
Following the Artemis I mission in November 2022, NASA was roundly criticized for its opaque handling of damage to Orion’s heat shield. The seriousness of the problem was not disclosed for nearly a year and a half after the Artemis I mission, when NASA’s Inspector General finally published close-up images of char loss—chunks of ablative material at Orion’s base that were intended to protect the spacecraft during its return but had fallen away.
To address these concerns, NASA tapped an “independent review team” in April 2024 to assess the agency’s investigation of the heat shield. This group’s findings were finalized in December 2024, at which time NASA formally decided to fly the Artemis II mission with the existing heat shield. Although NASA held a news conference to discuss its conclusions, a publicly released copy of the independent review team’s report was heavily redacted, creating further doubt about the integrity of the process. Some notable critics assailed NASA’s decision to fly on the heat shield as is and decried the ongoing lack of transparency.
That is more or less where the matter stood until a few days before Christmas, when Isaacman officially became NASA administrator.
Perhaps the most striking revelation was what the NASA engineers called “what if we’re wrong” testing.
At the base of Orion, there are 186 blocks of a material called Avcoat, individually attached to provide a protective layer that allows the spacecraft to survive the heating of atmospheric reentry. Returning from the Moon, Orion encounters temperatures of up to 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius). A char layer that builds up on the outer skin of the Avcoat material is supposed to ablate, or erode, in a predictable manner during reentry. Instead, during Artemis I, fragments fell off the heat shield and left cavities in the Avcoat material.
Work by Saucedo and others—including substantial testing in ground facilities, wind tunnels, and high-temperature arc jet chambers—allowed engineers to find the cause of gases becoming trapped in the heat shield, leading to cracking. This was due to the Avcoat material being “impermeable,” essentially meaning it could not breathe.
After considering several options, including swapping the heat shield out for a newer one with more permeable Avcoat, NASA decided instead to change Orion’s reentry profile. For Artemis II, it would return through Earth’s atmosphere at a steeper angle, spending fewer minutes in the environment where this outgassing occurred during Artemis I. Much of Thursday’s meeting involved details about how the agency had come to this conclusion and why the engineers deemed the approach safe.
The Avcoat blocks, which are about 1.5 inches thick, are laminated onto a thick composite base of the Orion spacecraft. Inside this is a titanium framework that carries the load of the vehicle. The NASA engineers wanted to understand what would happen if large chunks of the heat shield were stripped away entirely from the composite base of Orion. So they subjected this base material to high energies for periods of 10 seconds up to 10 minutes, which is longer than the period of heating Artemis II will experience during reentry.
What they found is that, in the event of such a failure, the structure of Orion would remain solid, the crew would be safe within, and the vehicle could still land in a water-tight manner in the Pacific Ocean.
The composite layer beneath the heat shield is intended to withstand a maximum temperature of 500°F during reentry. During Artemis I, the maximum temperature recorded, despite the persistent cracking and char loss, was 160 degrees. So any crew on board would have been safe. Even so, the heat shield damage was a serious concern because the agency’s modeling did not predict it.
After more than two years of testing and analysis of the char loss issue, the NASA engineers are convinced that, by increasing the angle of Orion’s descent during Artemis II, they can minimize damage to the heat shield. During Artemis I, as the vehicle descended from about 400,000 to 100,000 feet, it was under a “heat load” of various levels for 14 minutes. With Artemis II, this time will be reduced to 8 minutes.
Orion’s entry profile will be similar for the first two and a half minutes, but afterward, the Artemis II entry will undertake a bit of a higher heat load than Artemis I for a couple of minutes. All of the agency’s modeling and extensive arc jet testing indicate this will produce significantly less cracking in the Avcoat material.
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