NASA delays launch of historic moon mission

[Eko]

NASA is now targeting March for the earliest possible launch of its historic Artemis II lunar moon mission, which will send four astronauts into deep space for the first time since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.

The decision came in the early hours of Tuesday after NASA said it had completed a wet dress rehearsal, a crucial test of the towering rocket system that will launch the astronauts on an unprecedented path around the moon. The mission had been expected to lift off as soon as February 8.

NASA said it encountered several problems during the test after cold weather caused a late start, including running into issues with hydrogen leaks while filling up Artemis II’s Space Launch System rocket with propellant. The delay would allow teams to review data and conduct a second launch rehearsal, the agency said in a blog post.

I was looking forward to this. Hopefully next month.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/03/science/nasa-artemis-2-delays-moon-mission-launch

[Volaris]

1. Good good good...SOMEBODY over there remembers what it is to kill an astronaut crew in a screw-up.

THANK GOD.

[LudwigPastorius]

2. There are serious problems with the heat shield on the Orion crew module they are using.

Serious, as in large chunks come off of it randomly during reentry.

Instead of reengineering that part of the spacecraft, Trump's business-buddy NASA administrator decided to go ahead with the launch using a plan for a shallower reentry, in the hopes that the shield won't be AS affected.

I've got a bad feeling about this mission.

[fujiyamasan]

3. Same issue as the shuttle?

Are they using ceramic tiles still?

That’s what it was either Columbia right?

[VMA131Marine]

5. That's not what happened to Columbia

During launch a piece of spray on foam from the external tank attachment structure fell off and hit the leading edge of the wing. The wing leading edge is a carbon-carbon composite structure and quite thin; the shuttle did not use tiles there. Anyway, the piece of foam punched a significant hole in the carbon-carbon leading edge that, on re-entry, allowed hot plasma generated by the shuttle’s hypersonic flight to enter the wing structure and melt critical components and structures. The wing structure itself was mostly aluminium so it was destroyed quite rapidly once exposed to the high temperature gas.
NASA has never had another heat shield fail on its other manned missions from Mercury through Gemini to Apollo. Neither have the Soviets/Russians for that matter although they had two other reentry failures resulting in fatalities: an failed parachute deployment and valve leak that depressurised the spacecraft too soon and asphyxiating the crew.

[LudwigPastorius]

6. NASA is using a material that was created for the Apollo missions, Avcoat.

The blocks of material are designed to give you controlled ablation as they heat up, meaning a more-or-less uniform degradation over the whole shield.

Instead, on the Artemis I flight, they got spalling that caused big gouges in the material. Here's a zoomable photo.


https: //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Artemis_I_Orion_heat_shield.jpg

[Coventina]

4. I confess I have a really bad feeling about this.

ETTD.

I don't trust getting on an airplane.

Trump's NASA?

[RoseTrellis]

7. Problems long before Rump

This project is a decade and a half old and has cost over 30 billion dollars.

[haele]

9. NASA has had issues since bean counters took over from scientists.

The problem with NASA is that once we put a man on the moon, everyone looked at each other and said "now what"....
And the political forces that felt they needed more attention started making noises about the waste of money a moon shot was as if that was the only accomplishment that came out of the Apollo program.
Why should the country be spending soooo much money on engineering and scientific research - and, BTW, social projects helping lazy poor folks and heathens - money that doesn't really help wealthy corporations, financial groups, and other monopolists who need that government taxpayer investment in their sectors helping their businesses...

[beaglelover]

8. I don't understand why we're spending the $ to do this. We've already been to the moon. This seems like a huge

waste of taxpayer $.