The one and only (unmanned) test flight of the rocket, Artemis I, which launched in 2022, was delayed six months because of a hydrogen leak that required repeated returns to the hangar.
Early this month, nearly four years later, NASA had to delay the launch of Artemis II because of a hydrogen leak in the exact same spot.
Liquid hydrogen, it turns out, is a difficult rocket fuel to work with. As National Geographic explained, “It’s particularly prone to leaking because it’s such a small molecule, capable of escaping through the tiniest equipment gaps. It also must be kept at extremely cold temperatures to stay in liquid form. In turn, that extreme cold can then affect the integrity of the seals, leading to increased leak rates.”
That’s why modern-day rocket companies including SpaceX are using “a blend of liquid methane and liquid oxygen, which isn’t as leak-prone and can be stored at higher temperatures.”
So why is NASA still using hydrogen? Why do you think? It wedded itself to old technology when designing Artemis.
Meanwhile, the reason it took four years to mount Artemis II was in part because of another problem exposed during the first one.
When the unmanned Orion capsule – which NASA spent 20 years developing – returned to Earth after circling the moon, the heat shield showed signs of serious damage from the extreme temperatures of reentry, a troubling finding NASA handled in typical bureaucratic fashion.
As Ars Technica reported earlier this year:
Following the Artemis I mission in November 2022, NASA was roundly criticized for its opaque handling of damage to Orion’s heat shield. The seriousness of the problem was not disclosed for nearly a year and a half after the Artemis I mission, when NASA’s Inspector General finally published close-up images of char loss — chunks of ablative material at Orion’s base that were intended to protect the spacecraft during its return but had fallen away.
Two years later, NASA decided to go with the original heat shield design because replacing it would have been too expensive and would have delayed the program even more. NASA says that changing the return flight path would protect the astronauts.
CNN reports that not everyone is convinced this will work, and quoted Dr. Charlie Camarda, a heat shield expert and former NASA astronaut, who said that “What they’re talking about doing is crazy.”
Then, this weekend, NASA discovered that, although it appears to have solved the hydrogen leak, there was a helium flow problem, which is why it’s now returning the massive rocket to the hangar for repairs.
So, the launch of Artemis II, which had been scheduled for Feb. 8 and will carry four astronauts to circle the moon for the first time in 54 years, now won’t happen until sometime in April, at the earliest.
And what has been happening elsewhere while NASA has been fumbling around with leak-prone, decades-old rocket technology and failure-prone heat shields? Private companies are leaving it in the dust.
Just since April 2023, SpaceX has launched 11 test flights of its cutting-edge Starship – the most powerful rocket ever built. The first stage is powered by 33 Raptor engines that have been redesigned twice in the past decade. And, unlike the old Artemis rocket, it will all be reusable. SpaceX even managed to catch the 20-story booster in a pair of “chopsticks.”
When NASA last went to the moon in 1972, it was using cutting-edge technology developed at breakneck speed in the midst of the Cold War.
Today, it looks like a dinosaur ready for the boneyard.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I & I Editorial Board
The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.