However, once NASA engineers got a closer look at the Orion spacecraft, their optimism faded. They saw cracks in the craft's heat shield and divots in the ablative thermal protection layer ...

TL;DR: NASA has ... away from the heat shield as the module descends through the atmosphere, increasing in temperature due to friction. The material is key in the thermal protection system of ...

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the delays are needed to revise the Orion crew capsule's re-entry trajectory to reduce stress and prevent the sort of unexpected heat shield damage seen after ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Upon reentry ...

told SPACE.com. But Solar Shield should provide "much more specificity." Massive sun eruptions The chief target for NASA's Solar Shield are huge sun eruptions called coronal mass ejections ...

More of the charred material than expected came off the heat shield during the Artemis I reentry, and the way it came off was somewhat uneven, NASA officials said. Orion's heat shield is made of a ...

The heat shield of the Orion spacecraft ... causing a breach in the thermal protection system. In January, when announcing the Artemis delays, James Free, NASA’s associate administrator, said ...

NASA has announced that it is delaying its ambitious Artemis II and Artemis III missions, which will see astronauts travel around and then land on the moon for the first time in over 50 years.

will install additional thermal protection material in the bolt gaps. The report added that the work for Artemis 2 can’t be completed until NASA finalizes its work on the overall heat shield.

During the test flight, the shield will enter the Earth's orbit and inflate to nearly 20 feet (six meters) in diameter in what NASA describes as "the largest blunt body aeroshell to ever go ...