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NASA hopes to return astronauts to the moon by 2028, but building a spacecraft to take them to the lunar surface is proving more difficult than expected. A new watchdog report warns that the Artemis human landing program faces not only delays and technical problems, but also unresolved crew safety risks.
findings, has been published Find critical gaps in testing and crew survival analyzes for both potential landings, released Tuesday by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General: SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Lander. This is a serious problem because if both landings experience a catastrophic event, NASA will not be able to rescue the stranded crew from space or the lunar surface.
“Without rescue capability for Artemis missions, the crew would be lost if the HLS fails on the lunar surface or fails to dock with a waiting Orion or Gateway (in lunar orbit),” he said.
The report comes less than two weeks after NASA Artemis overhauled the programadded another test flight to prepare for a manned moon landing while working to standardize the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for more frequent launches. According to the new schedule, NASA’s Artemis 4 mission will attempt to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028, potentially followed by another crewed landing mission (Artemis 5) later that year.
Questions about crew safety must be answered
NASA hoped to land the first Artemis crew on the Moon by mid-2027, and planned to do so using the Starship HLS, a modified version of the Starship upper stage. But the agency in October SpaceX has reopened its contract due to significant developmental delays. Quick Blue Origin emerged as the strongest competitorand now there are these two companies they compete against each other Deliver the crew landing on time for the 2028 mission.
According to the OIG report, it is too early to determine the technical capabilities, financial results and impact of this effort to accelerate lander development. However, the report raises concerns about the safety of these spacecraft. While the OIG acknowledged that the agency was proactive in reducing and preventing hazards associated with both landings, it found gaps in NASA’s risk reduction methodology.
For example, agency officials say the program follows NASA’s “test-as-you-fly” guidelines, which dictate that systems be tested in conditions as close as possible to real spaceflight conditions, but the report found missed opportunities to apply those principles to SpaceX and Blue Origin’s uncrewed demonstration missions.
Moreover, NASA and SpaceX are at odds over whether the Starship HLS meets manual control requirements and whether the Artemis crew can operate the lander if necessary. According to the report, this is an important safety feature and a key component of Starship HLS’s human-rated certification. As for the Blue Moon, it’s still unclear how its manual controls will work.
NASA’s approach to analyzing how the crew could survive a catastrophic event also has flaws, according to the report. These “crew survivability analyses” are limited by technical constraints and available resources, and because they usually occur in the later stages of lander design, they mainly identify risks rather than helping engineers design systems to mitigate those risks. In addition, the analyzes do not take into account the survival time of the crew after the immediate disaster.
Where does NASA go from here?
The report outlines several steps NASA can take to better manage funding for the HLS program and improve crew safety and survivability during Artemis missions. First, the OIG urges NASA to establish clear rules for tracking government support to contractors and adjusting costs when that support changes or is subsequently added.
It also recommends that both SpaceX and Blue Origin update their contract language to reflect these new rules, review lessons learned from the Commercial Crew Program regarding manual spacecraft control, and update crew survivability analyzes to include long-term crew survival strategies.
The report states that NASA has agreed to implement most of these recommendations, but the agency did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment on the matter.
As NASA takes steps to address the OIG’s concerns, the clock will continue to tick. The agency is under serious pressure they land astronauts on the moon before Chinatherefore, overcoming the technical hurdles of the HLS program and addressing critical security concerns must occur expediently.
