Following the first human journey around the moon in more than half a century, all eyes will be on the heat shield that will protect the crew as they return to Earth — a heat shield, which was damaged ...

NASA’s return to crewed lunar flight is now hinging on a slab of material at the bottom of Orion that did not behave the way engineers expected. Instead of a straightforward fix, the agency is ...

In deep-space travel, sometimes the most important “hardware” is a few inches of material that only matters for minutes. The Artemis II mission will orbit four astronauts around the Moon and return ...

TL;DR: NASA has completed its assessment of the cracked heatshield on the Orion module and determined that Artemis II astronauts will be safe without requiring a redesign. NASA has wrapped up a ...

Less than a year after announcing major delays for the next two Artemis moon missions, NASA managers said Thursday the projected flight dates are slipping once again, with the first piloted voyage ...

NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material was liberated during its speedy reentry. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

NASA officials declared the Artemis I mission successful in late 2022, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment. The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft performed nearly flawlessly on ...

Using cutting-edge material licensed from NASA, a protective heat shield manufactured in-house by Varda Space Industries for the first time enabled one of its capsules to blaze through Earth’s ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sierra Space Corporation have developed a new heat shield based on venerable 1980s Space Shuttle technology to protect the next generation of reusable spacecraft from ...

The Artemis II mission that will take a crew of astronauts around the moon and back to Earth is expected to launch no earlier than February 6, 2026.

TL;DR: SpaceX's main challenge in making Starship fully reusable is developing an effective orbital heat shield. The shield must withstand extreme temperatures during reentry without cracking. Musk ...