In the first hours after Artemis 2 leaves Earth for its historic moon mission, which could be as early as February 2026. the astronauts will do a practice docking in their Lockheed Martin Orion spacecraft. They will be using the upper stage, also known as the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS), of their Space Launch System rocket as a target.
“We’re going to make sure that the flying qualities of the Orion spacecraft are suitable for the more complex missions, where we’re going to dock to a lander or to the Gateway – the orbiting space station around the moon,” said pilot Victor Glover, a NASA astronaut on the mission, during a Sept. 24 crew briefing about the mission livestreamed from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which SpaceQ virtually attended.
Also with flying with him will be Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a mission specialist, along with two other NASA astronauts: commander Reid Wiseman, and mission specialist Christina Koch. The quartet will not only be testing how the spacecraft handles, but how to live in it for their 10-day mission. It’s 315 cubic feet, which is about 30% larger than the Apollo spacecraft, according to Lockheed – but also fits an extra person.
“Once we’re done with that, we’re going to continue to reconfigure the cabin to make sure that it’s ready for us to live and to work for the next nine days,” Glover said of activities after the burn. “We’re going to break down the seats” – that’s because those will not be needed in zero gravity, now that launch is accomplished – “we’re going to make sure the environmental control system is ready, and then we’re going to monitor a few burns.”
The day before that press conference, SpaceQ spoke with two NASA officials who are familiar with the Orion spacecraft to learn more about how to turn a four-person vehicle into a temporary home. Naturally, first of mind is assuming safety. The Orion for Artemis 1 performed well during its flight, but issues with the heat shield had to be investigated after it arrived back on Earth in 2022 from its own round-the-the moon mission.
This investigation took time, which “delayed” Artemis 2 from a more optimistic launch date. (The word “delayed” is in quotes because Artemis 2 is a developmental mission, and Hansen and the rest of the crew have been clear for years that timelines are not the consideration – safety is.)
“The biggest probably lesson learned out of Artemis 1 was on our heat shield performance,” Orion deputy program manager Debbie Korth told SpaceQ. “We noticed some features on the heat shield that we did not expect to see. And so we spent the better part of a year doing a test program to understand, why those features were there.”
Korth emphasized the crew module and its temperatures came through safely on this occasion, although overall the charring and damage observed on the heat shield was not an acceptable risk to the team for future Artemis missions. “It’s one of those things when things don’t behave the way you expect them to; we need to get to the root of the cause.”
A different heat shield design is being flown on Artemis 3 and subsequent missions that will fully address the issues of the heat shield. For Artemis 2, NASA chose to perform a “skip entry” to “stay out of the heat regime that was causing this issue and still be able to fly the spacecraft we had” – the other choice would have been redesigning the Artemis 2 spacecraft to accommodate a new heat shield design, but NASA deemed it would not be necessary.
Aside from the heat shield issue, other changes included cross feeding of the propulsion systems for redundancy in case of a blocked line or leaking valve; adding a full environmental control and life support system, including carbon dioxide removal and humidity removal; adding components such a toilet, an exercise device, a hydration station for food and survival items such as a life raft; adding a “suit loop” for when the crew is in their launch and entry suits; and adding displays and controls for the crew in a “glass cockpit.”
“It’s a … set of menus that the crew uses to interface with the spacecraft,” Korth said of the cockpit design. “They can check and see how systems are performing, and then they use hand controllers – rotational and translational hand controllers – to actually fly the spacecraft. All of that is new for Artemis 2 because that would be the things that the crew would use to interact with the spacecraft directly, either as planned interactions like our rendezvous and proxops [proximity operations] demo we’re going to do [with ICPS], or unplanned interactions that they have with “caution and warning” [alerts of issues] and they have to go respond to some anomaly or something else on the spacecraft.”
Much of the design comes down to crew comfort and needs. Emergency equipment is mounted to the walls, in bright orange for visibility and easy access – this includes a fire extinguisher, the life raft, and a filter to remove smoke if a fire occurs on the spacecraft. The spacecraft also includes lockers for items like clothing, or the handles for their exercise device (which is permanently bolted to the spacecraft).
While the crew provided input for the design, they weren’t the only astronauts. Korth said there were representatives from the flight-crew office that were part of the design team, providing input from the early stages of the design. Artemis 2’s astronauts also recently performed a “crew equipment interface test”, in which they went into a flight module at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in their spacesuits to simulate the day of launch, including which items they needed to access.
“That always leads to, ‘Hey, I could really use a piece of Velcro, here.’ Or, ‘I could use this other thing on my leg – a tablet, or something that I could be looking at while I’m waiting for launch.’ Or, ‘There’s this gap here. I kind of worry about something floating down this gap. Why don’t you put some tape over that?’ “
Korth added that the three flown crew members (all the NASA astronauts have spent months each on the International Space Station or ISS, while Glover also piloted an early version of the SpaceX Crew Dragon) have also provided input on what to look for in microgravity, adding suggestions for hooks or window shades. Hansen has not flown in space – only as CSA funding equates to a crew flight, at current rates, every six years or so – but can offer decades of experience as a pilot.
Korth said that the crew’s help will also be beneficial for Artemis 3 – a minor, but still important item is the noise level of the toilet. Acoustic improvements to the fans, the pumps and the vacuum system should bring down the decibel level for the next crew, she said. A lot of attention is also being paid to the software, as displays can be tweaked fairly easily in between crews for usability – aside from obvious improvements for safety and security.
Speaking of safety, on Sept. 23 SpaceQ also spoke with Steve Platts – chief scientist of the human research program, or HRP – to learn more about the human-factors considerations for Orion. He said one of the chief considerations, looking ahead to Artemis 3, is learning how well the astronauts can exit a vehicle on their own – especially in an emergency, but critically also for landing activities.
Naturally, the program can use lessons learned from 25 years of work on ISS (as well as all the long-duration space programs that went on before that, in the United States, Russia and the Soviet Union.) Platts spoke to considerations such as blood pressure control, learning how to manage eyesight changes uncovered during long-duration ISS missions, figuring out remedies for space motion sickness, and dealing with radiation – which will especially be an issue outside the protective shield of low Earth orbit.
Program managers also have been interviewing still-living individuals who worked in the Apollo program, to learn “what didn’t make it into the books, what didn’t make it into the movies, what didn’t make it into the papers that came out,” Platts said. Fortunately, he added, “Technology has advanced so much in the 50-plus years since Apollo, that there were just some things that were impossible to do … things like an ultrasound machine to do scanning to see if you have muscle issues or look at your heart, or look at your gut, or your kidney.”
Another advance is in experiments such as AVATAR (which stands for A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response). It uses an organ-on-a-chip device, which means human tissue is placed on a microfluidic chip that can simulate how various tissues work, such as the brain, heart or liver.
“Pharmaceutical companies use that technology when they’re doing scans for new drugs,” Platts explained. “What we want to do is be able to apply that to our astronauts – and have them provide their cells – so that we can fly tissue chips in the future on missions before they ever fly, so we know how their own cells respond. We can treat them; we know what their problems are going to be, before they ever fly.”
The three main HRP experiments on the mission will be looking at biomarkers through a saliva study – to learn about hormone levels, protein levels and the like; examining sleep through the action of wearing a watch, as many of us do on Earth, along with questionnaires on sleep quality; and a video game-like study that will examine the sensory motor system.
“They’re going to be doing an obstacle course, so we can see how well they can move around after they land,” Platts explained. “It’ll have a simulation of a ladder to egress the vehicle, and then it has other components in it that look at how well they can stand up, and ambulate, and do things like that.”
Platts noted that he continues to be amazed at how well the human body can adapt to space – and even be resilient. “We take the squishy body that that evolved here on Earth, in 1G [Earth’s gravity], and put it up into space. It’s a microgravity. Change everything about it [the environment], and it [the body] adapts. And even though there are some issues, you do really well in space. And then you do pretty well when you come back – within days for some things, and a couple weeks for others. You’re pretty much back to normal, not too long after you land. If you think about that, it’s just truly amazing that the body is so adaptable. That you can go through all of those changes and all of that stress, and come out the other side in the same condition that you went up in. It’s just amazing.”