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NASA inspector general report highlights issues with Orion heat shield
A report by NASA’s inspector general highlights problems with the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield and other issues that delayed its first crewed launch.
The May 1 report by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed problems with the Orion spacecraft, as well as ground equipment and the Deep Space Network, from the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission launched in late 2022. In a response accompanying the report, Cathy Koerner, NASA associate administrator of exploration systems development, stated that ground testing “successfully recreated char loss” and that that the material in those tests “has the same features as observed on the Artemis I heat shield.” But the OIG report noted that while NASA was able to recreate the char loss, “they could not reproduce the exact material response or flight environment experienced during Artemis I.” At an April 26 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, said understanding the heat shield performance was the top risk for the Artemis 2 mission.
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