While NASA prepares to transport the bottom section of the next Space Launch System rocket from the Michaud factory in Louisiana to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has also announced a possible delay of the Moon landing from its previously scheduled date in early 2028.
For a Moon landing, NASA will need new spacesuits for the astronauts. The Apollo-era spacesuits are unfit for a Moon landing today, and two companies, Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, were therefore contracted to produce spacesuits suitable for the Moon as well as for microgravity conditions on the International Space Station (ISS). The timeline for delivery was to be 2025. Collins had to drop out from this short lead-time, but Axiom was working to make the deadline. It seems now that they will not be able to do that. The OIG report also faults NASA for turning to private companies rather than producing the suits in-house. The new NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman, has promised to expand the NASA organization in order to increase its ability to produce in-house, rather than farming out as much as it does today to private companies. That process, however, is just beginning. SpaceX has also produced new spacesuits and has proposed that they “tweak” their design in order to make them suitable for the Moon.
The spacesuit is not the only problem facing a Moon landing. The Human Landing Craft, which will dock with the Orion capsule to take astronauts to the surface of the Moon, is also still a “work in progress.” Artemis II was more of a “seat-of-the-pants” mission than many realize. On the Artemis I mission, there was much more charring of the heat shield than anyone had envisioned. The schedule was not postponed as a result, but they reconfigured a return trajectory that would not produce as much frictional heat, and it was a success. But this is not normal operating procedure for NASA. They are also now working to come up with a new heat shield for Artemis IV, scheduled for 2028, when they again will have a “hot reentry” from the Moon.
The OIG report has also underlined NASA’s primary commitment to the safety of the astronauts. It is hoped that the NASA Administrator will keep to that principle even were it to “interfere” with the arbitrary schedule set by an impatient President.
