Tag: Artemis

If all goes according to plan, this coming week – possibly Wednesday, April 1st – we’ll see the Artemis 2 mission lift-off from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, carrying four humans to the vicinity of the Moon, the first mission to do so in over half a century.

The journey to get to this point has been long and arduous; projects have been initiated, cancelled, re-organised and recommenced, funding has been provided, cut, renewed, reduced, extended… but the dream of returning to the Moon had remained steadfast in the eyes of enough people (doubtless aided by China’s emergence on the human spaceflight scene with their announced intent to go to the Moon), to keep political minds engaged in the journey.

Artemis 2 is very much a proving mission, aimed at ensuring the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and its European-built service module are both fit for purpose in supporting crews of four on extended missions to the Moon, as well as testing critical capabilities required for those missions which will actually deliver humans to the South Polar Region of the Moon starting with Artemis 4 – such as rendezvous and docking with the lander vehicle those headed for the Moon will use.

But who are the four people who will be aboard Artemis 2’s Orion capsule, with its “space toilet” that has so fixated much of the media? I thought I’d offer some brief biographical notes.

Commander Gregory Reid Wiseman, Mission Commander

Known simply as Reid, and a US Naval aviator and Captain, Wiseman has already accumulated 165 days, 8 hours and 1 minute in space (including 12 hours and 47 minutes split across 2 EVAs), having flown to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-13M and as a part of the Expedition 40/41 crew between May and November 2014.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1975, Reid earned a degree in computer science from  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, new York. In 2006, whilst a member of the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), he gained a master’s degree in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

In 1999, Wiseman was designated a Naval Aviator and underwent training to fly the famous F-14 Tomcat. Initially based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, he was deployed prior to being deployed to the Middle East for two tours of combat duty.  During his second tour of duty, he was selected to attend the US Navy Test Pilot School, where on graduation he was assigned as a test pilot and Projects Officer at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Following this, he was assigned to carrier duty and transitioned to flying the F/A-18 super Hornet, once again seeing overseas deployments. He transferred to NASA in 2009.

Following his time aboard the ISS as a part of Expedition 40/41, Wiseman was appointed Chief of the Astronaut Office, a post he held for 2 years (December 2020 through the end of November 2022), stepping down from the post to active flight status in the hope of securing a position on one of the Artemis missions.  In April 2023, he was selected to command Artemis 2.

Wiseman was married to Carroll Wiseman (nee Taylor), with whom he had two daughters, through to her death from cancer at age 46.

Victor Jerome Glover Jr, Mission Pilot

Born in 1976 in Pomona, California, Victor Glover was a keen sportsman in his youth, playing for the California Jaguars football team as both a quarterback and running back and receiving the Athlete of the Year award in 1994. However, his father helped nurture a deep interest in science and engineering, leading him to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in general engineering in 1999 whilst attending the California Polytechnic State University, where he continued to play football as well as turning his hand to wrestling.

During the three years between 2007 and 2010, Glover earned three further degrees: a Master of Science in flight test engineering; a Master of Science in systems engineering and Master of Military Operational Art and Science, all of which were earned whilst he was a serving officer in the US Navy. He gained his aviator wings in 2001, and like Wiseman, trained on the F/A-18 Hornet. Also like Wiseman, he saw duty at NAS Oceana prior to being assigned to the USS John F. Kennedy and deployed to the Middle East as a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Following this, Glover also entered the US Navy Test Pilot School, and served as a test pilot based at China Lake, California. Subsequent to this, he was sent to the US Naval Air Facility, Atsugi, Japan, and thence to the USS George Washington for a Pacific Ocean tour of duty.  Throughout his military career, Glover used the call sign “Ike”, a sobriquet jokingly given him by his first commanding officer, which was said to mean “I know everything”, on account of his long list of degrees.

As well as earning multiple technical degrees, Glover also obtained a Certificate of  Legislative Studies which led him being offered a role within Senator John McCain’s staff.

Glover joined NASA in 2013, and following the completion of his training, he was assigned to fly on the first operational flight (and second crewed flight overall) of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, also serving as a crew member for Expedition 64/65. The mission launched in November 2020, with Glover clocking 167 days 6 hours and 19 minutes in space, 26 hours and 4 minutes of which were spent performing four separate EVAs.

He was announced as the Artemis 2 Pilot alongside Wiseman and the other crew members in April 2023. He is married to Dionna Odom Glover and they have four daughters.

Mission Specialist Christina Koch

Christina Koch (pronounced “cook”, and nee Hammock) has accumulated the most time in space thus far of any of the Artemis 2 crew – a total of 328 days 13 hours and 58 minutes; 42 hours and 15 minutes of which were spread across 6 individual EVAs.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1979, Koch was raised in Jacksonville, North Carolina. From the earliest she can remember she had always wanted to be an astronaut. Following schooling, she enrolled in the North Carolina State University, earning Bachelor of Science degrees in engineering and physics before going on to gain a Masters in electrical engineering. In 2001, whilst still studying, she was accepted into the NASA Academy Programme at the Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC), Maryland.

At GSFC, Koch worked out of the High Energy Astrophysics facility, contributing to scientific instruments on several NASA missions that studied astrophysics and cosmology. In 2004, Koch took a 3-year secondment with the US Antarctic Research Programme as a Research Associate, spending her time in both the Antarctic and Arctic regions. Whilst in Antarctica, Koch experienced temperatures of -79.4º C. She also served as a member of the fire fighting teams at the various bases she worked at, and also joined the Ocean / Glacier Search and Rescue teams.

Returning to the US in 2007, Koch contributed to instruments studying radiation particles for NASA missions, including the Juno and Van Allen Probes whilst seconded to the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University. She then spent time at NASA’s sister organisation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In 2013, Koch was selected for astronaut training alongside Victor Glover. She was subsequently selected for Soyuz MS-12 as a part of the Expedition 59/60/61 crew. Koch joined astronaut Jessica Meir in the first all-female EVA ever undertaken, carrying out a series of upgrades to the power systems on the ISS across a total of three joint EVAs.

Originally, Koch was to have returned to Earth at the end of the Expedition 60 rotation. However, due to reassignment schedules, she was asked to remain aboard the ISS a further 6 months, allowing her to clock up her 328 days record in space – the longest continuous stay in space by a woman.

Jeremy Hansen (CSA), Mission Specialist

Jeremy Roger Hansen is the rookie among the crew and the only non-American. Born in London, Ontario, Hansen attended the Royal Military College, Ontario following his high school education. At RMC Ontario, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours in space science in 1999, before going on to earn a Master of Science degree in physics  with a research focus on wide field of view satellite tracking.

In 2009, Hansen was accepted into the ranks of the Canadian Space Agency, training as an astronaut. In 2013 he was selected to join the European CAVES programme, becoming a “cavenaut”. The following year NASA selected Hansen to serve as an “aquanaut” aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory during the 7-day NEEMO 19 undersea exploration mission.

Hansen is married to Doctor Catherine Hansen, a distinguished expert in women’s health. Together, they have three children.

The Artemis 2 Mission Patch

All NASA missions traditionally have a mission patch designed by the crew (with NASA management approval over the final design!).

These patches are generally symbolic in nature, often containing references to the mission or to current or past space events. In this, the Artemis 2 mission patch is no exception.

Firstly, its shape is symbolic of the Orion capsule’s general shape, indicating the vehicle as a home for the 4 crew. A stylised “AII” occupies the right side of the patch, signifying the mission umber and the fact that Artemis 2 is for “all humanity – a play on “for all mankind” of the Apollo era. This sits directly over the lunar far side – thus denoting the mission’s trip around the Moon, a red ribbon running from Earth and around the Moon mirrors a similar ribbon in the Project Artemis patch, the red of the ribbon indirectly referencing NASA’s role in aeronautics – as per the red chevron in the NASA insignia). The Moon is dominant in the patch, with the Earth rising behind it.

If this particular part of the patch rings bells, rest assured it is intentional: the Moon with the Earth rising behind it is designed to evoke memories of the famous Apollo 8 image Earthrise, thus linking Artemis II with the first Apollo space mission to fly around the Moon and back to Earth.

How to Watch the Launch

Artemis 2 is due to launch no earlier than 23:24 UTC on April 1st, 2026. You can watch the countdown and launch via NASA’s livestream (commencing 17:50 UTC on April 1st).

Lunar Gateway ”Paused”

Jared Isaacman, NASA’s current Administrator, continues to shake things up around Project Artemis – and quite possibly for the better in terms of focus and goals.

As I’ve previously covered, Isaacman has already made significant changes to Project Artemis which impact both missions and hardware (e.g. Artemis 3 will now be an Earth-orbiting mission, not a lunar landing mission).

On March 24th, 2026, Isaacman informed NASA personnel and the press that the space agency will be “pausing” work on its proposed Gateway Station, the much heralded space station occupying an extended halo orbit around the Moon. For those (myself included) who could not see any practical benefits in spending time and money developing yet another (if much smaller than the ISS) space station in lunar orbit, this is welcome news.

Gateway station has always come across as an unnecessary complication in getting people to / from the Moon. It’s halo orbit means it will only be within reach of crews on the lunar surface once every seven days – which is great when you have an emergency and need to evac someone pronto and then have to rendezvous with the station in order to get them back to Earth. It will also require a lot of additional faffing around with rendezvous and docking manoeuvres and generally act as something of a boondoggle, drawing on funding that could be better spent elsewhere – such as the infrastructure actually required to establish a permanent base on the Moon.

This is what Isaacman is proposing: spending some US $20 billion over a period of seven years – a good portion of that money coming from allocations that would otherwise have gone to gateway – to develop and construct a permanent base on the Moon. Isaacman also expects member states involved in the Artemis Accords to help cover a portion of the of the costs – although as I’ll come to, this might not be so easy.

No hard details on the base were given – such as location, what infrastructure will be required (such as power systems – presumably nuclear – and so on), or how delivering the infrastructure and materials required to build the base will be achieved – although presumably Isaacman will be looking to the likes of Blue Origin and SpaceX with cargo variants of the lunar landing systems.

Not everyone is happy with the move, however. Japan and the European Space Agency were already partners in Gateway and due to provide core components and elements for the station and have been gradually ramping-up for production of said elements. Neither appear to be entirely sanguine over Isaacman’s decision, with ESA issuing a terse statement that could be read as meaning they’d been giving little or no warning of Isaacman’s decision, re Gateway.

The European Space Agency is currently holding close consultations with its member states, international partners and European industry to assess the implications of this announcement.

– ESA quote via AFP in response to Isaacman’s announcement on “pausing” Gateway Station

If this is the case – that there was no in-depth consultation on Gateway’s future with the likes of ESA and JAXA, then  while the “pausing” of Gateway is welcome, the handling of the announcement could be seen as somewhat less than diplomatic.

Yes, there’s been a lot in this column about Project Artemis and the US-led programme to return humans to the Moon, and while it might make Space Sunday sound a bit like a scratched record (Artemis..,Artemis…Artemis…), there is good reason for this: there’s a lot of news about the entire programme, from the anticipated launch of Artemis 2 and its crew on a trip around the Moon and back, to the focus of the main part of this article: major changes to the Artemis programme as a whole; so bear with me!

NASA’s current Administrator, Jared Isaacman, continues to surprise and impress despite concerns over his non-NASA activities and involvement with favoured space contractors. In my previous Space Sunday article, I covered Isaacman’s direct and open approach to the problems endemic to the Boeing CST-100 Starliner programme, and to the core of NASA’s management responsible for managing it (with two of the most senior resigning in the aftermath).

Following the press conference on that matter – which included the reading out of a letter to all NASA staff-  Isaacman was present at a February 27th, 2026 Project Artemis update which carried its own surprises whilst signalling a change in direction for the programme – potentially putting it on a far better footing that had previously been the case.

The update saw a number of significant announcements:

• The much-criticised Space Launch System (SLS) is not to be cancelled as yet – something many outside NASA have called for, despite there being no currently-available launch vehicle that can match its capabilities (see: Space Sunday: of Artemis and Administrators).
• However, SLS will be changing, with one significant element – the Exploration Upper Stage – now cancelled.
• As a result of the Exploration Upper Stage cancellation, the Block 1B variant of SLS will no longer be part of the SLS enhancement programme, nor, potentially, will be the even more powerful Block 2 version.
• NASA will attempt to raise the launch cadence for SLS from approximately once every 3 years to once every 10 months.
• Artemis 3 is no longer a lunar landing mission, but will be an Earth-orbiting test flight involving at least Human Landing System vehicle.
• The original Artemis 3 lunar landing mission is therefore redesignated Artemis 4, but the time frame remains a (optimistic) 2028.

SLS Changes

Much of the critique surrounding SLS has been on the matter of launch cost, which stands at some US $2.5 billion per vehicle. However, these costs are based on the overall development of SLS and Orion, and are not simply the physical cost of get a specific launch stack off the pad. This is something many of the louder voices raised against SLS – notably those from the SpaceX corner – tend to ignore when pointing to the “lower” cost of something like Starship, which is put at around US $100 million per launch. In this, it needs to be pointed out that this has yet to be proven, as Starship has yet to actually achieve orbit, and even then, launch costs for NASA could be as much as US 1.3 billion, when all of the required tanker launches and the launch of the (also unproven) orbital propellant station the Starship HLS will require just to get itself to the Moon.

That said, SLS is a costly launch mechanism; in 2023, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report stating SLS was “unsustainable” at current spending levels, and suggested that launch costs could increase over time to as much as US $4 billion as a result of the technical complexity of the system, plans to try to extend its capabilities and its low launch cadence.

Exploration Upper Stage and “Near Block 1” SLS Development

Dropping the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) from the SLS development curve should address some of these concerns over rising costs.

EUS was due to debut with the Block 1B development of SLS, providing it with a more powerful and capable upper stage than the current Interim Cryogenic Propulsion (ICPS) upper stage. As it is now cancelled, NASA is pivoting away from the Block 1B version of SLS in order to develop a “near Block 1” upgrade, which will use a new upper stage in place of both ICPS and EUS.

Just how much this will save is open to debate: some US $3 billion has already be spent in developing EUS, and there will obviously be costs involved in developing a commercially-based replacement for it and ICPS. But there are other another compelling reasons for replacing EUS with a unit more in line (if more powerful) than the ICPS: simplicity of overall design and design and continuity of experience.

The Block 1 SLS is now a known creature, foibles and issues all taken as read. It’s a vehicle NASA is continually gaining knowledge and understanding in operating. Block 1B, with the EUS, it’s extended core stage elements (extended interstage and the enlarged universal stage adaptor) is a different beats, liable to demonstrate different flight characteristics and dynamics as well as introducing new elements which could have their own teething problems. Sticking with an only slightly modified vehicle to supersede the current Block 1 vehicle, reduces many of these factors, allowing NASA to “standardise” the SLS design and continue to gain data, knowledge and understanding on  / of its characteristics incrementally. This was pretty much how things were handled back in the Apollo era, and the approach has a lot going for it, a point acknowledged during the briefing.

After successful completion of the Artemis I flight test, the upcoming Artemis II flight test, and the new, more robust test approach to Artemis III, it is needlessly complicated to alter the configuration of the SLS and Orion stack to undertake subsequent Artemis missions. There is too much learning left on the table and too much development and production risk in front of us. Instead, we want to keep testing like we fly and have flown. We are looking back to the wisdom of the folks that designed Apollo. The entire sequence of Artemis flights needs to represent a step-by-step build-up of capability,

– NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya

Exactly who will provide the replacement for ICPS / EUS and what form it will take was now discussed at the briefing. However, it was made clear that all of NASA’s contractors and partners in Artemis were consulted through the driver to redirect the programme, and all have been supportive of the moves – even Boeing, who stand to lose the most with the EUS cancellation, whilst SpaceX and Blue Moon have both opted to “accelerate” the development of their HLS systems.

Perhaps two of the strongest potential contenders for producing a new upper stage for SLS are United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Blue Origin.

ULA already has the powerful cryogenic Centaur V upper stage. Centaur is a venerable launch vehicle stage with a lot of expertise behind it, with the Centaur 5 already forming the upper stage of ULA’s Vulcan-Centaur rocket. Blue Origin, meanwhile, has the upper stage of their New Glenn booster. Whilst a “new kid on the block”, the stage has already proven itself reliable on two high-profile flights for New Glenn, and will shortly be back in action for a third flight, thus experience is quickly being gained in its operation. Further, blue Origin are already looking to develop an enhanced version of the stage in line with their plans for an even more powerful variant of their New Glenn vehicle, thus there is potential here as well.

Neither Centaur V nor the New Glenn upper stage would be suitable for SLS straight off the shelf, but using them as either a basis for a new stage design or developing a variant off of an existing design (Blue Origin) could significantly reduce the costs and time involved in developing and testing a new SLS stage.

Launch Cadence

Another mitigating factor when it comes to reducing overall costs is the decision to try to launch SLS on a greater cadence than has thus far been seen. Isaacman would specifically like to see an SLS / Artemis launch once every 10 months, putting Artemis almost on a similar launch cadence as Apollo. Doing so will likely increase Artemis costs, but it also brings some very clear benefits:

• Personnel expertise. Gaps measured in years between launches can result in personnel expertise loss as people become tired of waiting for the next launch and seek a career move elsewhere, taking their expertise with them. A faster launch cadence with clear mission objectives is more likely to keep more of that expertise in-house at NASA for longer.
• It makes Artemis potentially more robust, presenting NASA with a chance to present a clear roadmap for achieving the goals of establishing a lunar base and maintaining a human presence there. Clear time frames and mission objectives also help Congress in allowing the money to flow into NASA to support the programme.

Of course, achieving such a cadence is no easy task; thus far, Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 (of which more below) have demonstrated that, like it or not, SLS and its ground support systems are extremely complex and subject to technical issues which can so easily upset launches.

Artemis 3 – No Longer Aiming for the Moon

The decision to “divert” Artemis 3 to an Earth orbital mission was perhaps the biggest surprise in the update – although “divert” is not entirely correct.

What is proposed is the insertion of an additional Artemis / SLS launch between what is currently Artemis 2 and what would have been Artemis 3, the first crewed lunar landing in the programme. That mission – presumably utilising the same crew – will now effectively become Artemis 4, with the new Earth-orbital mission taking the name Artemis 3.

The aims of the revised Artemis 3 mission – scheduled for a 2027 launch – so far comprise (additional mission goals may be added as the mission requirements are further assessed):

• On-orbit rendezvous and docking with one or other (or possibly both) of the current Human Landing System vehicles in development: Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2, and the nascent SpaceX  Starship-derived HLS.
• Perform integrated checkout of life support, communications, and propulsion systems on both HLS vehicles and assess their suitability / practically for zero gravity operations.
• Carry out comprehensive tests of the new extended extravehicular activity (xEVA) suits to be used both with Artemis as as a replacement for the current generation of US EVA suits on the International Space Station.

This is actually a smart step on NASA’s part, and harkens back to the Apollo era and specifically, the Apollo 9 mission.

Under the original Artemis plan, no provision was made for any on-orbit human testing of the SpaceX HLS vehicle ahead of Artemis 3. Instead, SpaceX were obliged to send and uncrewed HLS lander to the Moon and conducted an automated landing (or possibly 2) – but there were no provisions for any crewed testing of the vehicle prior to Artemis 3.

Conversely, Blue Moon Mark 2, with its longer lead time (not being required – in theory – until Artemis 5 under the previous plans, and now Artemis 6 under the revised approach) would have undergone Earth orbit crewed testing prior to being used for lunar operations.

As such, this new step offers a means by which both vehicles (assuming both are ready for a 2027 launch) can be properly tested in Earth orbit, where the risks to the crew are potentially reduced, simply because they can use Orion to make a fast return to Earth. Thus, both can be properly assessed, including any shortfalls they might exhibit in advance of any attempt at a lunar landing. This is something that is clearly much better for all concerned than otherwise sitting and crossing fingers, as would have been the case with the original Artemis 3 mission.

Other Changes

Additionally, the Artemis Update indicates further changes within NASA’s operating structure as a whole with a drive to rebuild core competences and to better oversee commercial contracts and be more hand-on with commercial partners (as indicated in the Starliner press briefing). Key to this will be the implementation of standard processes right  across the space agency, not just covering Artemis, but all commercial partnership and space projects.

Further, the space agency will embark on a process of new and more extensive involvement with Congress to keep them appraised of progress with SLS and Artemis, and has already embarked on a restructured process of negotiating with commercial partners and engaging them in NASA’s decision-making processes.

In the meantime, the NASA announcement has received a largely positive reaction from observers and stakeholders, and the approach it advocates potentially helps put Project Artemis on a much more realistic footing to achieve its goals.

Artemis 2 SLS Rolled Back to the VAB

As I reported in my previous Space Sunday update, Artemis 2 suffered another setback in plans to get a crewed Orion space vehicle on a 10-11 day free return flight to the Moon (with a day spent in a high Earth orbit beforehand) off the ground in March.

The issue this time resides within the helium pressurisation system within the rocket’s Interim cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), which is required to get Orion to orbit and plays a role in meeting all of the mission’s planned goals. As I noted at the time of writing that update, NASA felt there were two potential routs to resolving the issue: by leaving SLS on the pad at Kennedy Space Centre’s Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B). Or rolling the entire stack back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where a more comprehensive examination of the issue could be performed.

It was decided the latter was the better choice of action, and so on February 25th, 2026, the Artemis 2 launch vehicle and its Mobile Launch Platform were slowly and gently rolled back to the VAB atop one of the famous Crawler-Transporters.

The physical move of the rocket and its launch tower structure commenced at 14:38 UTC, and took over 11 hours to complete, the Crawler-Transporter inches the entire structure into one of the VAB’s massive high bays inch by inch with incredible precision given the overall size of the Crawler-Transporter and its payload. The night-time arrival also afforded some unique views of the entire stack edging up to and then entering the VAB.

Currently, the hope is to correct the helium pressure issue in time to get the rocket back to the pad so it can meet an April 1st through 6th (inclusive) launch window. However, more extensive rectifications to the helium system, if required, will be left for the next SLS vehicle which will carry the crew selected for the new Artemis 3 mission to orbit.

NASA’s ISS Expedition 73/74 crew, flying as SpaceX Crew 11, have made a safe and successful return to Earth following their medical evacuation from the space station.

As I reported in my previous Space Sunday piece, the decision to evacuate the entire 4-person crew, comprising NASA astronauts Zena Maria Cardman and Edward Michael “Mike” Fincke, together with Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, was made after one of the four suffered an unspecified medical issue. Details as to who has experienced the issue and what form it takes still have not been revealed – although when initially discussing bringing the crew back to Earth roughly a month ahead of their planned end-of-mission return, the agency did make it clear the matter was not the result of an injury.

NASA also made clear the move to bring the crew home was in no way an emergency evacuation – had it been so, there were options available to return the crew a lot sooner. Instead, the evacuation was planned so that the affected crew member could have their situation properly diagnosed on Earth, whilst allowing time for the combined crew on the ISS to wrap-up as much as possible with outstanding work related to their joint time on the station and to allow Fincke, as the current station commander, to hand-over to cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, who together with Sergey Mikayev and  US astronaut Christopher Williams will continue aboard the station, where they will at some point in the next month be joined by the Crew 12 team from NASA.

The crew began prepping for their departure in the evening (UTC) of Wednesday, January 14th, when after a round of goodbyes to the three remaining on the ISS and then changing into the SpaceX pressure suits, the four Crew 11 personnel boarded Crew Dragon Endeavour, prior to the hatches between the spacecraft and station being closed-out and final checks run on the vehicle’s status in readiness for departure.

Following this, all four of the crew ran through a series of leak checks on their suits to ensure all connections with the Dragon’s life support systems were working, and Cardman – acting as the Crew 11 Mission commander and the experienced Fincke as the Crew 11 vehicle pilot – completed all pre-flight and power checks.

Undocking occurred at 22:20 UTC, slightly later than planned, Fincke guiding the spacecraft smoothly and safely away from the station until Endeavour moved through the nominal 400-metre diameter and carefully monitored  “keep out sphere” surrounding the ISS. This “sphere” represents the closest any vehicle can come to the ISS whilst operating entirely independently from the station – vehicles can only move closer whilst engaged in actual docking manoeuvres.

Crossing the sphere’s outer boundary some 20 minutes later, Endeavour entered the “approach / departure ellipsoid” – a zone extending away from the ISS denoting, as the name suggests, the area of space along which vehicles can approach / depart the station and make a safe manoeuvres away should anything happen during an initial docking approach.

By 22:52 UCT, some 30 minutes after initial undocking, Endeavour transitioned away from the ISS and into its own orbit around the Earth, intended to carry to a position where it could commence it re-entry manoeuvres and make a targeted splashdown off the coast of California. The main 13.5-minute de-orbit burn was initiated at 07:53 UTC on January 15th, as Endeavour passed over the Indian Ocean and  Indonesia. From here, it passed over the Pacific reaching re-entry interface with the denser atmosphere at 08:31 UTC. At this point communications were lost – as expected – for around 7 minutes as the vehicle lay surrounded by super-heated plasma generated by the friction of its passage against the denser atmosphere, prior to being re-gained at 08:37 UTC.

Splashdown came at 08:40 UTC, closing-out a 167-day flight for the four crew. Recovery operations then commenced as a SpaceX team arrived at the capsule via launches and set about preparing it to be lifted aboard the recovery ship, which also slowly approached the capsule stern-first. By 09:14 UTC, Endeavour had been hoisted out of the Pacific and onto a special cradle on the stern of the MV Shannon, allowing personnel on the ship to commence the work in fully safing the capsule and getting the hatch open to allow the crew to egress.

On opening the hatch, a photograph of the four crew was taken, revealing them all to be in a happy mood, the smiles and laughter continuing as they were each helped out of Endeavour with none of them giving any clues as to who might have suffered the medical condition. Gurneys were used to transfer all four to the medical facilities on the Shannon, but this should not be taken to signify anything: crews returning from nigh-on 6-months in space are generally treated with caution until their autonomous systems – such as sense of balance – etc, adjust back to working in a gravity environment.

Following their initial check-out, all four members of Crew 11 were flown from the Shannon to shore-based medical facilities for further examinations. The ship, meanwhile, headed back to the port of Long Beach with Endeavour. Following their initial check-outs in California, the four crew were then flown to Johnson Space Centre, Texas on Friday, January 16th for further checks and re-acclimatisation to living in a gravity environment. No further information on the cause of the evacuation or who had been affected by the medical concern had, at the time of writing, been given – and NASA has suggested no details will be given, per a statment issued following the crew’s arrival at Johnson Space Centre.

The four crew members of NASA’s / SpaceX Crew-11 mission have arrived at the agency’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, where they will continue standard postflight reconditioning and evaluations. All crew members remain stable. To protect the crew’s medical privacy, no specific details regarding the condition or individual will be shared.

– NASA statement following the arrival of the Crew 11 members at JSC, Texas.

Artemis 2 on the Pad

The massive stack of the second flight-ready Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion MPCV payload, destined to carry four astronauts to cislunar space and back to Earth, rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre atop its mobile launch platform, to make its way gently to Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B).

The rocket – comparable in size to the legendary Saturn V – and its launch platform slowly inched out of High Bay 3 at the VAB at 12:07 UTC, carried by one of NASA’s venerable Crawler Transporters at the start of the 6.4 kilometre journey.

The drive to the launch pad took almost 12 hours to complete, the average speed less than 1.6 km/h throughout. Standing 98 metres in height, SLS is powered by a combination of 4 RS-25 motors originally developed for the space shuttle, together with two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) based on those also used for the shuttle – although these boosters, with their tremendous thrust, will only be available to the rocket during the first couple of minutes of its ascent to orbit, helping to push it through the denser atmosphere before being jettisoned, their fuel expended.

The next major milestone for the launch vehicle is a full wet dress rehearsal on February 2nd, 2026. This involves a full countdown and fuelling of the rocket’s two main stages with 987 tonnes of liquid propellants, with the rehearsal terminating just before engine ignition. The wet dress rehearsal is a final opportunity to ensure all systems and launch / flight personnel handling the launch are ready to go.

It was the wet dress rehearsal that caused numerous problems for NASA with Artemis 1, the uncrewed flight of an Orion vehicle around the Moon in 2022, with repeated leaks occurring in the cryogenic propellant feed connections on the launch platform. These issues, together with a range of other niggles and the arrival of rather inclement weather, forced Artemis 1 to have to return to the VAB three times before it was finally able to launch.

Since then, changes have been made in several key areas – including the propellant feed mechanisms. The hope is therefore that the wet dress rehearsal for Artemis 2 will proceed smoothly as the final pre-flight test, and the green light will be given for a crewed launch attempt, possibly just days after the rehearsal. However, Artemis 2 will not be standing idle on the pad until February 2nd; between now and then there will be a whole series of tests and reviews, all intended to confirm the vehicle’s readiness for flight and ground controllers readiness to manage it.

Assuming everything does go smoothly, NASA is currently looking at Friday, February 6th, 2026 as the earliest date on which Artemis 2 could launch, with pretty much daily windows thereafter available through until February 11th, with further windows available in March and April.

As I’ve recently written, Artemis 2 will be an extended flight out to cislunar space over a period of 10 days, during which the 4-person crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will thoroughly check-out the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and its fitness as a lunar crew transport vehicle.

These tests will initially be carried out in Earth orbit over a 24-hour period following launch, during which the Orion vehicle – called Integrity – will lift both the apogee and perigee of its orbit before performing an engine burn to place itself into a trans-lunar injection flight and a free return course out to cislunar space, around the Moon and then back to Earth. The transit time between Earth and cislunar space will be some 4 days (as will be the return transit time). This is slightly longer than Apollo generally took to get to the Moon, but this (again) is because Artemis 2 is not heading directly for a close orbit of the Moon, but rather out to the vicinity of space that will eventually be occupied by Gateway Station, where crews will transfer from their Orion vehicle to their lunar lander from Artemis 4 onwards. Thus, this flight sees Integrity fly a similar profile the majority of Artemis crewed missions will experience.

As I’ve also previously noted, this flight will use a free return trajectory, one which simply sends the craft around the Moon and then back on a course for Earth without the need to re-use the vehicle’s primary propulsion. Most importantly of all, it will test a new atmospheric re-entry profile intended to reduced the amount of damage done to the Orion’s vital heat shield as it comes back through Earth’ atmosphere ahead of splashdown.

What has long been recognised by many who follow the US-led Project Artemis programme to return humans to the Moon now appears to be becoming recognised within the upper echelons of NASA’s management. Namely, that the biggest hold-up to the programme’s primary goal of safely landing a crew on the surface of the Moon and returning them to lunar orbit remains the inability of SpaceX to meet NASA’s – or even its own – time frames and deadlines in the development its Starship-derived Human Landing System (HLS) vehicle.

SpaceX was awarded the contract to develop the initial vehicle intended to deliver crews from cislunar space to the Moon’s South Pole and then return them back to cislunar space over five years ago, in May 2020. At the time, the announcement was controversial for a numbers of reasons:

• It was both a last-minute entry into the competition to provide NASA with a suitable HLS vehicle, and the most technically complex of the three major proposal which went forward to the final selection process, requiring up to 14 launches of the SpaceX Starship / Superheavy system just to get it to lunar orbit.

• Despite NASA stating two options for the initial HLS would be selected, only the SpaceX option was carried forward in the so-called “Option A” contract, with NASA providing SpaceX with an initial US $2.89 billion for vehicle development, with both Blue Origin and Dynetics effectively being frozen out.
• The driving force behind the decision to go exclusively with SpaceX was NASA associate Administrator Kathryn Lueders, who had a long-standing relationship with SpaceX, and who subsequently retired from NASA in 2023 to join SpaceX. Whilst highly speculative in nature, there have been fingers pointed towards this chain of events as being more than coincidental.
• The decision to go with SpaceX alone for at least the Artemis 3 mission (the first planned crewed landing) was upheld by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in July 2021 after both Blue Origin and Dynetics filed complaints about the handling of the contract on NASA’s part. This decision came in spite of NASA’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) having already reporting that the agency’s own estimates for the development time frame for HLS (four years) was entirely unrealistic, and that due to its complexity the SpaceX HLS approach would potentially result in the most severe of anticipated delays in HLS development, requiring up to 4 additional years of development and testing in order to be flight-ready.
• In December 2023, a NASA Key Decision Point (KDP) review for Artemis 3, intended to assess whether or not the programme was on course to meet its intended targets, rated SpaceX as having only a 70% of achieving a required uncrewed demonstration test flight of their HLS vehicle (including landing it on the Moon and returning it to lunar orbit) by February 2028, some two years behind the Option A contract goal of flying this mission in mid-2026.

Oddly, both SpaceX and NASA placed part of the blame for the delay to the demonstration test with on-going (at the time) issues with the Orion crew capsule heat shield – even though Orion is an entirely separate vehicle to HLS, and does not form part of the contracted SpaceX HLS demonstration flight.

Further, while SpaceX has pointed to the 30 HLS development milestones it has achieved, these relate to hardware needed for power generation, communications, guidance and navigation, propulsion, life support, and space environments protection, rather than the vehicle as a whole, with some of these milestones either relating purely to the definition of some of this hardware, rather than any form of development and / or integrated testing.

By the start of 2024, concerns around SpaceX’s ability to actually deliver on their promises for their HLS vehicle were such that Jim Free, the man then at NASA charged with overseeing the Artemis programme, was openly talking in terms of potentially swapping the Artemis 3 and Artemis 5 missions, the latter intended to be the first use of the Blue Moon HLS system in development by Blue Origin, and which at the time was seen as much further along in its development cycle than the SpaceX system.

Whilst Free has since retired from NASA, the acting administrator for the agency, Sean Duffy, echoed Free’s point of view on October 20th, 2025, indicating that he is now open to reviewing the Artemis 3 HLS contract. In particular, he has also suggested shifting to using Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander on the basis of growing scepticism that SpaceX will have their HLS system ready for Artemis 3 by 2028/29.

Unsurprisingly in this age of politics by insult, Duffy’s comments were met with childish name-calling on the part of the SpaceX CEO. To be sure, Duffy is perhaps not the best qualified to be leading NASA even on an interim basis (and has made a fair number of gaffes as head of the Department of Transportation); but as per the reasons noted above, there is good reason to question whether SpaceX can meet its obligations for HLS even within the revised times frame for the Artemis 3 mission (which is now looking to a possible 2028 launch).

Nor did the SpaceX CEO limit his scorn to Duffy; in the same string of social media posts he took aim at Blue Origin, claiming the company “has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the Moon” (which he later refined to mean “useful payload”). Given that the launch vehicle for Blue Moon – Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket – both successfully achieved Earth orbit and deployed a payload demonstrator on its maiden flight, both of which Starship has yet to do in a single launch despite (at the time of writing) 11 flights, this critique came over as little more than a petulant outburst than a reasoned defence of Starship HLS.

Following Duffy’s statements – which appear to also be driven in part by concerns over China’s stated aim to place taikonauts on the Moon by 2030 – speculation was rife in some circles as to whether NASA might seek to an alternative to SpaceX and Blue Origin as the Artemis 3 HLS provider. This speculation encapsulated both the idea that NASA might try for a “home-grown” HLS, or bring-in another company – such as Lockheed Martin (which has made no secret of its desire to supply an HLS alongside of its Orion crew vehicle) – to provide a suitable HLS.

However, given the lead-times involved in seriously moving forward with either of these options (which would likely see Artemis 3 pushed back well beyond a 2029), coupled with the costs involved when the Trump Administration is aggressively trying to reduce NASA’s budget, it would seem unlikely that either of these options would be seriously taken-up. As it stands and in the wake of Duffy’s comments, NASA has confirmed that both Blue Origin and SpaceX have been given until October 29th, 2025 to submit “accelerated proposals” for HLS development, but no other proposals for “alternate” HLS vehicles are currently being sought.

Exactly where this will all lead is also open to debate. As does, ironically enough, the overall leadership of NASA. Whilst only appointed Acting Administrator for the agency, Duffy has spent some of his time in the role floating the idea that NASA should be folded into his Department of Transportation. Were this to happen, it would effectively cement his position as the person in overall charge of the agency and its budget – although the idea has already received widespread pushback from the US space industry as a whole. At the same time, the White House has indicated it is possibly going to re-nominate Jared Isaacman for the role of NASA Administrator.

As I reported at the time in this pages, Isaacman was on the verge of being confirmed to the role earlier in 2025, when Trump’s White House abruptly withdrew his name as their nominee following a public spat between Trump and the SpaceX CEO (with whom Isaacman has had a close working relationship for several years), who at the time was coming to the end of his tenure as a “special advisor” to the White House. However, on October 14th, it was revealed that the Trump Administration has again been in talks with Isaacman about a potential resumption of his nomination to lead NASA, which he apparently is still interested in doing.