Moon Mission Could Launch as Soon as Feb. 6

NASA is getting ready to send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than half a century—and then pull off the riskiest part: bringing them home. The Artemis II mission, targeted for launch as soon as February, will put four astronauts—NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen—aboard the Orion capsule for a roughly 10-day loop around the moon and back, the Wall Street Journal reports. The launch window opens Feb. 6, but NASA hasn't confirmed a launch date, Space.com reports.

The centerpiece test isn't the outbound trip—it's Orion's blazing return through Earth's atmosphere at about 25,000 mph, when its underside will be hit with temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Protecting the crew is a 17-foot-wide heat shield made of an ablative "AVCOAT" epoxy material that is designed to slowly burn away while keeping the cabin around room temperature. That system did not behave quite as planned during Orion's uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, the Journal reports. Instead of smoothly eroding, the shield shed chunks in more than 100 places

NASA traced the problem in part to Orion's "skip entry" trajectory, in which the capsule dipped into the atmosphere, then briefly climbed back toward space before its final descent—like a rock skipping across water. The agency says gases and pressure that built up between those dips contributed to the chipping. For Artemis II, engineers have adjusted the timing of that skip maneuver to shorten the gap between the first and final atmospheric dives, which they say should prevent a repeat.

Former astronaut Charlie Camarda has publicly called Orion's shield flawed and questioned NASA's probe of the 2022 issues. Agency officials reject that, insisting the new trajectory and analysis have made the system safe. Wiseman, who will command Artemis II, says the crew is on board with that conclusion. "We were definitely satisfied we found the root cause," he told the Journal in September. We know exactly what happened." The Orion capsule and the Special Launch System rocket were stacked months ago, and rollout to Launchpad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which was used for historic missions including the Apollo 11 moon landing, could happen within days, Space.com reports.