A day-by-day description of the entire Artemis-2 manned mission
NASA today posted a detailed day-by-day description of the entire ten-day Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon, outlining the tasks planned for the astronauts on each day.
The launch is now targeting April 1, 2026.
The description of their closest approach to the Moon is both interesting and underwhelming.
The Artemis II crew will come their closest to the Moon on flight day 6, while traveling the farthest from Earth. Artemis II could set a record for the farthest anyone has traveled from Earth depending on launch day, breaking the current record – 248,655 miles away – set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 crew. The distance the Artemis II crew will travel depends on their exact launch day and time.
Over the course of the day, the crew will come within 4,000 to 6,000 miles of the lunar surface as they swing around the far side of the Moon – it should look to them about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. [emphasis mine]
In other words, Orion is not going to get very close, and in fact, the Moon will only be 2 to 3 times bigger than what we see here on Earth. I suspect the best photographs taken will be those showing both the Earth and Moon, both of which will be relatively small.
Overall, I remain highly concerned about this mission. The life support system has never been tested in space before, and they will spend the first day checking it out in Earth orbit. And the return to Earth will involve using a heat shield that did not perform well on the Artemis-1 mission in 2022, losing chunks during re-entry.
They hope a less stressful flight path will mitigate this issue, but then, they need to hit that flight path perfectly on their way back from the Moon. During yesterday’s briefing it was obvious this was a concern to NASA officials.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
NASA today posted a detailed day-by-day description of the entire ten-day Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon, outlining the tasks planned for the astronauts on each day.
The launch is now targeting April 1, 2026.
The description of their closest approach to the Moon is both interesting and underwhelming.
The Artemis II crew will come their closest to the Moon on flight day 6, while traveling the farthest from Earth. Artemis II could set a record for the farthest anyone has traveled from Earth depending on launch day, breaking the current record – 248,655 miles away – set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 crew. The distance the Artemis II crew will travel depends on their exact launch day and time.
Over the course of the day, the crew will come within 4,000 to 6,000 miles of the lunar surface as they swing around the far side of the Moon – it should look to them about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. [emphasis mine]
In other words, Orion is not going to get very close, and in fact, the Moon will only be 2 to 3 times bigger than what we see here on Earth. I suspect the best photographs taken will be those showing both the Earth and Moon, both of which will be relatively small.
Overall, I remain highly concerned about this mission. The life support system has never been tested in space before, and they will spend the first day checking it out in Earth orbit. And the return to Earth will involve using a heat shield that did not perform well on the Artemis-1 mission in 2022, losing chunks during re-entry.
They hope a less stressful flight path will mitigate this issue, but then, they need to hit that flight path perfectly on their way back from the Moon. During yesterday’s briefing it was obvious this was a concern to NASA officials.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Let’s hope and pray that the 1st doesn’t turn out to be Artemis Fool’s Day.
Related:
CAPITALISM X’s NERD = EARTHS / MARS ENERGY FUTURE
“Capitalism is always the solution, NEVER Socialism.
Capitalism like all constructs of man can become a problem if abused, and all constructs of man can and will be abused. But ultimately when you put real need in line with human intellect (Nerds) and technology within the structure provided by the Constitution plus Capitalism (incentive) in finding real solutions to real problems, that is where a consistent positive prosperous future lies, FOR EVERYONE.”
Read the rest: https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/capitalism-x-nerd-earths-mars-energy-future
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e691e8_db5fe074b9094203aea3091d8c4805c8~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_925,h_616,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/e691e8_db5fe074b9094203aea3091d8c4805c8~mv2.jpg
Re: your final sentence about NASA concern about risk level on this mission
I’m not sure which exchange struck you in this regard, and maybe it was the same one that struck me? Because I was more than a little surprised to hear John Honeycutt and Lori Glaze say what they said about a probabilistic risk assessment — and apparently Rachel Kraft was too, judging by how she jumped back in to cut off any follow up questions:
Thanks to Keith Cowing for transcribing all of that, saving me the trouble of typing it.
Honeycutt has his LOC number on Shuttle rather off, but I suppose that’s a niggle; maybe he’s using some internal study I don’t know about.
What Honeycutt did and regretted instantly was reveal the true risks of this mission. It really is as risky as Apollo 8, without the larger political Cold War issues that forced Apollo 8 to take those risks.
There is no reason to fly this mission with people around the Moon. None. Isaacman himself admitted as much when he changed Artemis-3 from a landing to an Earth-orbit docking and rendezvous test mission.
It is especially foolish to do it manned with that questionable heat shield. I noticed that Honeycutt was very worried about it, in noting that he wanted to get the flight path exactly right on return, because of that heat shield.
Similarly, why fly a 10 day mission out to lunar distances with an untested life support system? Shouldn’t you first test that system for 10 days in Earth orbit, as was done with Apollo 7, prior to Apollo 8?
Actually, the Moon will be substantially larger than we see her from the earth. From earth, her diameter subtends an angle of around 0.51 to 0.54 degrees from earth. arctan(2160/240,000 miles)=0.52 degrees.
vs 6000 miles from the Moon >>> arctan(2160/6000) = 19.8 degrees, about 40 times larger, as you would expect since you are now 40 times closer to the Moon.
Now the b’ball at arm’s length >>> arctan(9.5/30 inches) = 17.6 degrees. The Moon WILL look like a basketball held at arm’s length when you are 6,000 miles from it on the far side.
Richard M: I’m deleted the obscenity by Honeycutt. Just because Cowing doesn’t mind such things does not mean I allow them here.
According to my BOTE call, they are gong to be between 37 and 56 times closer to the moon depending on 4,000 or 6,000 miles. It should look a lot more than 2x or 3x times bigger.
My question is when you aren’t landing and this is a pathfinder mission, why not limit the crew risk to only two? Why do you need four? That also buys you some margin against a ECLCS underperformance.
I would have thought that a fly around would be a little closer.
Something to get some real data about that side of the moon.
Better camera shots then ever before and possibly a Lidar scan on the back side.
pzatchok: Not one picture taken by these astronauts is going to even come close to the high resolution global map that Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has already produced in its many years in orbit around the Moon. NASA will claim they are doing important observations, but that will be a lie.
You want to see the Moon in detail, go to LRO’s website.
Butch Wilmore: “No pain in space”: https://youtu.be/kv5rbaxY5z8?si=tqzHf0qp_-3fJ6H_
Still wondering is Rachel Kraft is related to…?
Hello Bob,
“There is no reason to fly this mission with people around the Moon. None. Isaacman himself admitted as much when he changed Artemis-3 from a landing to an Earth-orbit docking and rendezvous test mission.”
Unfortunately, there *is* a reason to fly this mission, and it’s purely political.
Some will point out that Apollo 8 (a very risky mission, too, as you note in your book) was flown for political reasons, too — certainly in terms of its timing. But there were some legitimate technical boxes that mission ticked off, in a way that’s not really true of Artemis II; and there was at least a political valence to the Space Race as it existed in late 1968 that just ain’t here with our present competition with China.
P.S. Bob, my apologies about the obscenity, which Keith’s transcription only partly fixed with the asterix. I scan these comments with an obscenity filter before I paste and post, and that, plus the sheer length of the transcription, is why it slipped though. Thank you for allowing it through with just the edit.
Hello Patrick,
I had the same thought! But if she’s related to Chris, it must be very distant, and anyway it’s not a very uncommon surname. Chris only had two children, and Rachel is not a child of either of them.
From the linked article:
” . . . the crew will have a full day, with the morning almost entirely devoted to tests of their spacesuits. Officially called the Orion crew survival system, the orange suits protect the crew during launch and reentry, but also could be used in an emergency to provide the crew member wearing it with a breathable atmosphere for up to six days if Orion depressurized.”
Not exactly a spare spacecraft, but it seems Orion has a redundant environmental system.
One more reflection:
1. I think it is worth noting (I mean generally, since our blog host is a subject expert on Apollo, and knows this, but many other readers probably do not) that NASA in the 1960s also refused to do any thorough probabilistic risk assessment for Apollo, either, thanks to a decision by then-Administrator James Webb, for a reason which was surely shrewd politically but is open to criticism on engineering management grounds. The best treatment of this subject, which you can find on the NTRS server, puts it this way:
However, this appreciation of the risk was not considered appropriate for the public. During Apollo, NASA conducted a full Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) to assess the likelihood of success in “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” The PRA indicated the chance of success was “less than 5 percent.” The NASA Administrator felt that if the results were made public, “the numbers could do irreparable harm.” The PRA effort was cancelled and NASA stayed away from numerical risk assessment as a result.
(Harry W. Jones, “NASA’s Understanding of Risk in Apollo and Shuttle,” NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, 2018, page 2)
Webb did such a good job of burying that initial PRA, by the way, that even now I can find no evidence that it has ever made its way into the public realm, or even a FOIA request — even Mr. Jones doesn’t seem to have had access to it.
But if Webb’s decision was problematic, I think we all should be more troubled that NASA is repeating that now with Artemis II, given everything that’s happened to NASA human space flight since Apollo and the lack of any significant technical justification for a mission like this.
2. Consider this: The program risk requirement for loss of crew on crewed SLS/Orion missions was formally stipulated in 2014 as 1 in 75.* (See link below for that.) For years, SLS advocates (some of whom worked at NASA or its contractors) over on the NSF forums have tried to insist that the architecture is going to be far safer than that. But today, John Honeycutt and Lori Glaze confirmed that NASA management itself understands that this mission is going to have a considerably higher risk than even 1 in 75.
https://oiir.hq.nasa.gov/asap/documents/2014_ASAP_Annual_Report.pdf (The discussion of risk can be found on pages 11-13.)
____
* As Jones notes in his paper, NASA’s own internal PRAs concluded that even in its final set of missions in 2006-2011, the Space Shuttle had a loss of crew risk of 1 in 90. So even the formal program requirement for SLS/Orion is worse than that — and this mission is going to be even riskier than *that*, because NASA has apparently decided to get around that requirement by not even doing a formal probabilistic risk assessment for Artemis II in the first place!
Richard M: All that every one of these predictions proves is that they are utter garbage. When compared to reality, they fail to predict anything.
What Webb really was doing, and what Honeycutt tried but failed to explain, was that it is really a waste of time doing these things. Better to focus on getting the engineering right.
Bob, if I may: The problem is that it was *NASA* that established a 1 in 75 LOC requirement for the program. We can argue that they shouldn’t have bothered with doing any PRA, but they *did*. And now they’ve apparently decided to just ignore the requirement for this mission. And *no one* has called them out on it, not even ASAP, which made such a fuss about it back in 2014. ASAP is useless, as we all know; but the agency should at least be forced to explain why they threw their own requirement (however dubious it was in the first place) out the window. I mean, that might force an awkward conversation (longer than the two minutes in which Honeycutt stumbled into it the other day) about just how risky this stack sitting in the VAB right now actually *is*.
The larger question of the value of probabilistic risk assessment . . . I’m not really qualified to wage a debate on that. Risk assessment is something anyone operating an aerospace vehicle has to engage in; whether PRA is the best way to undertake that is another question. But one thing I might highlight is something Harry Jones’s paper suggests: there are times when PRAs have actually reached what appear to be fair assessments of risk, and the ones done for the Shuttle in its final years is a case in point. But the obvious fact about the Shuttle after 2006 is that it had built up a substantial flight record, and that provided a lot of empirical data for an agency now forced, post-Columbia, to actually use it in a rigorous way to assess risk. Flying a lot gives you a better chance of assessing risk, however you choose to do it.
And this is the value of how SpaceX operates: its hardware gets loads of flight heritage and iterative improvements benefiting from that experience before humans ever fly on it, and that makes assessing its risk considerably easier. Falcon 9 flew 83 times before DM-2; Starship will likely fly nearly that many times before humans ride the HLS version down to the lunar surface for the first time, let alone ride one up and down to the Earth’s surface. SLS and Orion will never have that kind of flight heritage.
Richard M,
You wrote: “The problem is that it was *NASA* that established a 1 in 75 LOC requirement for the program.”
1. It looks like they may be treating it more as a goal than a requirement.
2. If it is for the program, then maybe they believe that they may violate it for specific missions. Because ASAP (Aerospace Safety
Advisory Panel) was created to advise NASA’s administrator on safety issues and hazards, it seems like the administrator has the right to ignore the advice. This does not mean that ASAP can ignore safety issues or hazards.
“Flying a lot gives you a better chance of assessing risk, however you choose to do [assess] it.”
This is true, but not helpful for assessing Artemis II. NASA has only the one data point, the Artemis I flight, and that datum is without the life support system to maintain a crew. That datum also shows a greater than expected hazard for reentry.
Robert’s original sentence, which began this topic, remains valid: “During yesterday’s briefing it was obvious this [life support and heat shield issue] was a concern to NASA officials.”
These officials know and understand that these two issues are a serious risk. Honeycutt thinks the overall risk is better than one in two, but does not think it reaches one in fifty, which for this flight is worse than the one in seventy-five program requirement.
Your point that it takes many flights to verify that the risk is better than the required one in seventy-five shows us that SLS-Orion must fly many times for us to assess the actual risk. One data point does not do the trick.
In my opinion, the cost of all these flights is not worth the reassurance that SLS-Orion meets the safety requirement. SLS was designed by Congress but with no mission in mind, and it is ill suited to achieve any of the missions that have ever been assigned to it. SLS-Orion is headed for obsolescence soon, and there is nothing that NASA, Congress, or any commenter here can do to save it.
Commercial companies have set their own goals for what needs to be done in space, and they are making the hardware needed to achieve them. They exceed the government’s goals, and the hardware is well suited to do the job at reasonable cost and apparently with reasonable safety. SLS is not in anyone’s plans except for Congress and NASA, and it is limited only to the Artemis missions. No one else is interested in SLS.
____________
As an additional thought: The reason to fly this mission may be purely political, perhaps to show the world that America is ahead of the Chinese in this version of a space race, so that may be the motive to violate safety requirements. Since NASA thinks that the risk is much less than 50% but more than 2% (is this a risk of loss of crew or a risk of not meeting all mission objectives?), then they may believe that the reward of showing up the Chinese is worth the risk of loss of crew.
Do We the People think that showing up the Chinese is worth the risk? We surely will be upset if the crew is lost (Congressional investigations and recriminations), we won’t much care if mission objectives are not met (e.g. abort the mission after one or two low Earth orbits due to some problem (e.g. life support acting up)), and we will likely say mildly good things for a day or two if the mission is a complete success.
On my mind, these days, is what will happen if the life support system does not work properly or the heat shield once again spalls in a way similar way to Artemis I? These two have been concerns of several experts and of many knowledgable civilians. Robert has already expressed concern that if the crew gets back safely, then NASA may think that taking risks like this is acceptable. (Did I express this correctly, Robert?)
Would Congress also think that such risks are acceptable? This kind of thinking* gave us Challenger and Columbia. NASA got into the mindset that because problems did not lead to catastrophe before, then they won’t lead to catastrophe the next time, either. Is Congress also thinking that since Artemis I did not lead to catastrophe, then Artemis II won’t?
Because the experts and civilians have extensively discussed their concerns over these two safety issues, what can Congress say in an investigation, should Artemis II fail? They cannot complain about NASA taking risks, because the risks are in the open, widely known even to Congress, and widely discussed. Congress knows that NASA is taking these risks and what the risks are, but Congress has not complained, implying consent for risk taking. Thus, my question as to what happens in the case of failure.
A month or so ago, space enthusiasts across the country discussed the safety issue extensively, and I think it is still worthy of discussion, because NASA, and by extension Congress, do not seem to be taking the danger as seriously as it should, considering the investigations and recriminations of past failures.
_________
* Diane Vaughn in her book The Challenger Launch Decision called it normalization of deviance. The hardware did not behave as expected, but because nothing went wrong it became thought of as normal behavior. The deviation was considered acceptable — even documented as acceptable — until Challenger blew up.
Hyman Rickover was an opponent of normalization of deviance from the early 1950s. Not sure if he coined the phrase or not, but at least a copy of one of his early letters mentioned the phrase, when it was circulated during the early 2000s whenever we reviewed work processes for the US Navy.
In terms of heat shields, the Dragonfly mission might be in more trouble than Orion:
https://phys.org/news/2026-03-titan-entry-lab-flag-nitrogen.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0008622325011297
Who would think hot oxygen makes things less severe….
I wonder if the earlier hexanitrogen find might allow supersonic retropropulsion here.
Fight nitrogen with nitrogen.
In terms of safety….a few years back, an individual was swallowed by a sinkhole under his own home. Not only would fireman not come near, but they forbade anyone else to at least throw the man a rope.
Something like that happens near me, I’ll tell folks to not call FD until a rope is thrown.
I also remember news footage of a train accident where a man stuck in debris was screaming…and was allowed to expire.
That kind of Uvalde crap is what has me incensed.
I would volunteer right now to hop in Orion, where I wouldn’t trust Starship with my ashes.
Jeff Wright,
Hopping onto Artemis 2 might wind up also entrusting SLS-Orion with your ashes.
On the topic of safety, it was because Thiokol documented that the deviance in O-ring behavior was acceptable that they began to have difficulty in convincing the NASA engineers that it was unsafe to launch Challenger, that fateful morning. This documentation was the reason NASA asked which it was, safe or unsafe, allowing Thiokol to get wishy washy with their recommendations. Thiokol lost quite a bit of credibility when someone suggested that they shouldn’t even launch in conditions below 53° F.
A similar rationalization (not really a rationale) for using the current heat shield is similar, that it is OK to use the heat shield in a trajectory and under heating conditions (maximum temperature and duration of heating) that it was not even designed for.
_____________
On the topic of Starship, it is not yet certified to handle ashes. It is still under development, whereas SLS and Orion are supposed to keep alive a crew on a mission that puts it eight days from rescue. No rope will save them, if there is serious trouble, but it appears from Jeff Wright’s comment that some people don’t get rescued.