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NASA’s Artemis lunar mission program regularly faces a wide range of questions—from lawmakers, auditors, businesses, and even the American public—about goals, schedule, costs, and more.
A question I hadn’t seen before was recently asked, directed at the plan to return American astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time since Apollo:
Is the Artemis 3 mission too ambitious?
Also notable: The concern was not raised by known skeptics, special interest groups, or a competitive party. It was NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.
ASAP, an independent group that reports to both NASA and Congress and focuses primarily on safety, has existed since the Apollo 1 tragedy in 1967. The group submitted its annual report for 2023, and I took a look (welcome back to another edition of “I read this so you don’t have to!”).
Most of the report covers familiar recommendations and comments to NASA, but then I came to ASAP’s emphasis on how many “firsts” are included in the Artemis 3 goals.
Two elements that ASAP repeatedly highlights stand out to me: the HLS (Human Landing System) element, also known as the lunar version of SpaceX’s Starship, and the EVA (Extravehicular Activity) spacesuits. Those are two crucial parts of the Artemis 3 plan that will not be tested during the Artemis 2 mission and will therefore make their debut in the next, higher-profile mission.
“With all of these and other important technical firsts occurring during this single mission, the Panel is genuinely concerned that they represent an even greater cumulative risk to an already difficult and complex Artemis III flight,” the report says.
ASAP advised NASA to consider redistributing Artemis 3 milestones more evenly among other missions, or else it will face “extraordinary pressure for the timely execution of a schedule that in many ways is beyond NASA’s full control.” “.
I find Artemis’s broad ambition admirable, so I think the ASAP concern actually presents an opportunity for NASA: to expand the “Artemis mission” nomenclature beyond the Orion capsule flights to include other relevant but currently underappreciated efforts. Does a crew vehicle fly to the moon? Call it mission Artemis! If Orion flying uncrewed around the moon is an Artemis mission, then the HLS’s first uncrewed landing should be too, because it’s arguably just as important to the goal of returning humans to the moon.
As it stands, the Artemis missions are few and far between, and I think NASA should change that to redistribute the risk ASAP sees, as well as to more appropriately highlight major milestones toward a long-term goal. of a continued presence on the moon.
ASAP report conclusion: As the current plan stands, Artemis 2 may happen in the (already delayed) target end of 2025but the long list of milestones that need to happen in between almost guarantees that Artemis 3 won’t be released 12 months later.