NASA leaders, Artemis astronauts visit KSC as moon mission faces another delay
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. - NASA’s Artemis mission is billions of dollars over budget, years delayed and now in a new space race with China.
The United States’ return to the moon isn’t getting any easier, and pressure is intensifying to meet deadlines and stop setbacks.
Heat shields on the Orion capsule were one of the biggest setbacks on the return to the moon. Earlier this month, NASA said they figured out a fix and started rebuilding.
It took two years for engineers to figure out what went wrong on Artemis 1 when the shields burned up during re-entry.
"There was no replication on the ground for the entire range. You don’t have facilities that can test the whole heat shield," said Howard Hu who’s an Orion program manager with NASA. He says he didn’t rush the team during this process because understanding the root cause was paramount.
With the heat shields settled, now NASA is worried about manufacturing capabilities across the country.
"A capability that’s been slowly lost. We’ve off-shored a lot of our critical industry. This is not just affecting us in civilian space but also defense and other areas," said Amit Kshatriya who’s NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator with the moon to Mars program.
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China is surging ahead in manufacturing, and that’s a concern because they’re also racing to the moon. The country said it wants to land as soon on 2030.
"Where we sit today it’s going to be very difficult to match that production," added Kshatriya.
A part of the production that is moving ahead is the 212-foot Artemis II core stage rocket. It went vertical for the first time in the Vehicle Assembly Building on Monday.
"To actually see a new tool come online that we can work with, we didn’t have this capability before to work on this from the top to the bottom vertically by itself," said Chris Cianciola who’s a NASA Deputy Manager with the SLS program.
NASA isn’t going to the moon by itself, and commercial companies know how important keeping deadlines is moving forward.
"We’re going to fly in the 26, and we’re going to fly again and land in the 27," said Kristin Houston with L3Harris Technologies.
Even with Artemis II delayed to 2026, astronauts are still confident the United States will reach the moon first.
"I sure hope so. I do think we will," said NASA Astronaut Victor Glover Jr.
Even with Artemis II delays, NASA is still moving ahead. The crew capsule for Artemis 4 is still under development.