Nasa Orion facing big problem! SpaceX Dragon to REPLACE...

More years of delay, but keep pouring money on us. This is exactly what the public is now thinking when referring to NASA's Artemis program. Yeah, can you guess what's going on? Although Artemis 1 has gone two years and Artemis 2 is just one year away, NASA is not yet sure what exactly happened with Orion's heat shield and how to fix it. More notable is the National Agency's opaque response, not only to Orion's issue, but to the entire program. Once people get sick of the way NASA is wasting their tax dollars, SpaceX Dragon is called out for help. NASA Orion is facing a big problem, SpaceX Dragon to replace. Find out everything in today's episode of TechMap. During a meeting with a committee of the NASA Advisory Council on April 26, Artemis Mission Administrator Amit Kshatriya said that the agency was still in the middle of its investigation on the performance of the heat shield from Artemis 1. Atop the SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft performed an unpiloted flight nearly flawlessly that took it around the Moon and back to Earth, setting the stage for the Artemis 2, the program's first crew mission. Everything should have been fine if the heat shield on the spacecraft did not ablate or burned off in an unpredicted way during its re-entry at the end of this mission. Avcoat, the heat shield material used on the Orion spacecraft, is indeed designed to be burned off during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. But, as NASA officials said, the material on the heat shield charred more than expected and the way it came off was somewhat uneven. Fortunately, Orion was able to safely splash down in the Pacific Ocean, but its photos of the heat shield post re-entry can shock anyone. Over 100 is the number of locations where ablative thermal protective material from Orion's heat shield chipped away unexpectedly during re-entry. That's such a bad way to be for re-entry. This poses a huge challenge for the Artemis team to figure the problem out before proceeding with Artemis 2. In fact, an unresolved investigation into the heat shield issue directly caused the delay of Artemis 2 from late 2024 until September 2025. Reportedly, Artemis engineers have made subscale heat shield tests in wind tunnels and arc jet facilities to find the cause, but it takes time. The space agency once came up with the idea of replacing the heat shield already installed on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis 2, but it is just not feasible. Such redesign or modifications to the Orion heat shield would probably take more time, up to a year at least. To some extent, the national body has reason to hesitate. In general, there are more unknowns with aerospace stuff than anything terrestrial just because it's such a different environment, and they can only recreate it so well down here through the test. There's a large reliance on being quite conservative for that reason. Instead of the comprehensive change, NASA talks about changes to trajectories to provide more favorable conditions for the heat shield to avoid and reduce some temperatures. So, is there any alternative for Orion at the present? In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence challenged NASA to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024 by any means necessary. NASA's response to Pence's challenge was to proceed with what it already had in the pipeline, the Orion crewed spacecraft and the SLS rocket. Nevertheless, the long-term delay and the exorbitantly high costs of the vehicles led some aerospace engineers to suggest the space agency should consider SpaceX's Dragon as the low-cost alternative. In theory, Crew Dragon virtually fits this mission. It has a dry mass of fewer than 10 tons and 50% more internal space than the Apollo capsule that carried three astronauts to the Moon. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is certainly capable of launching a Dragon capsule with a crew and a hell of a lot of cargo at the same time. There, the vehicle would dock with a lunar lander that would carry the crew to the surface while the Crew Dragon capsule remains in low lunar orbit. After sciencing on the Moon, the astronauts would use the lander to return to the Crew Dragon, fire the return stage and come home to Earth. There are a few obstacles here. NASA Administrator Bridenstine was dismissive when asked about using Dragons instead of Orion for the Artemis program. I think it's important to note that Crew Dragon was specifically designed for low Earth orbit and in order to send it to the Moon would require a ton of modifications, he said. I'm not saying you couldn't modify it, but if you modified it, it would look a lot like Orion. Frankly, the PICA-X heat shield used on Dragon cannot withstand 5,000 Fahrenheit, 2,760 Celsius during re-entry from the Moon, hotter than a spacecraft sees when it re-enters the atmosphere from low Earth orbit. PICA is lighter, more brittle and is installed in tile form with gaps. The Occot heat shield on Orion can be installed with no gaps but is harder to manufacture. Two different materials for two different mission profiles. Returning from LEO versus returning from the Moon. As I said, NASA is afraid to completely change the type of heat shield on the spacecraft because it would probably harm the Artemis' timeline. Not to mention Falcon Heavy is not a human-rated rocket yet. Handling this matter also requires working on an unexpected level of complexity and time. As for using the Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle for the Orion capsule, there are several issues with this scenario. First and foremost is the rather porky mass of the Orion and the relatively low high-altitude performance of the Falcon upper stage. The Orion capsule weighs in at over 33 tonnes at launch, complete with the service module, but the Falcon Heavy is only capable of delivering something in the order of 23 tonnes to lunar orbit, even in fully expendable mode. Another issue is the size of the Orion capsule itself, which at a diameter of over 5 meters is already at the limit of such a fine rocket. Red skinny and long. The Falcon's basic structure was never intended to launch something as large as the Orion and in order to make it work you would need to basically redesign the bulk of the vehicle, which requires lots of time. One given method is that NASA could solve that problem by launching a Dragon separately on a Falcon 9 and a propulsion module on another Falcon 9. They could then dock, a procedure NASA perfected during the Gemini program more than a half century ago, and proceed to the Moon. Anyway, changes in vehicles in this context are unlikely to occur that are not solely caused by technology. As you can see, a lack of transparency is common in NASA's operations. In the Inspector General's report that provided an assessment of NASA's readiness to launch the Artemis II mission next year, Catherine Coerner, the Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, showed a distinct tone of petulance. After concurring with each of the six recommendations in the Inspector General's report, Coerner made the following comment, NASA is dedicated to continuous enhancement of our processes and procedures to ensure safety and address potential risks and deficiencies. However, the redundancy in the above recommendations does not help to ensure whether NASA's programs are organized, managed, and implemented economically, effectively, and efficiently. Her words emphasized that the Inspector General's efforts were both redundant and unhelpful. NASA's senior managers certainly reviewed this report and their response to this was striking. That is not a correct interpretation of the agency's response, they added. NASA engineering teams contributed fully and openly to the Office of the Inspector General's report by providing data directly resulting from that work and appreciate the report's summary of those pre-existing efforts in the recommendations section. NASA remains committed to ensuring the safety of the Artemis II flight next year and to future missions. Clearly, NASA officials are feeling the pressure when it comes to Artemis, especially under Congress's close watching and the myriad review boards that dig into its programs and look for problems. However, as an outsider, the public has the right to know how NASA officials are spending the public's money. Reports of this type are essential in providing us with valuable insight into supposedly public programs that are largely hidden from view. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you next time NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology