NASA is a 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair winner for the Orion spacecraft’s stellar performance during the Artemis 2 mission, the first to send humans back to the Moon since the Apollo era.
The question
Can Orion’s life support systems keep astronauts alive for 10 days with no safety net, and can NASA’s redesigned reentry trajectory protect the crew during their return?
The results
On April 1, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, propelling the Orion spacecraft to orbit. The capsule carried the most precious cargo any spacecraft can harbor: human lives—the first astronauts charged with returning to the Moon in over 50 years.
This mission, Artemis 2, was Orion’s first crewed test flight. The stakes couldn’t have been higher.
Orion had never flown with full life support and human-rated systems, and the capsule needed to keep its crew—NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen—alive for 10 days as it journeyed around the Moon and back again.
Judd Frieling, a NASA flight director who worked on both Artemis 1 and 2, was watching closely to make sure these systems performed as expected. Aside from some issues with the toilet and a couple other minor anomalies, everything worked as it should, but Frieling told Gizmodo that Orion had plenty of backup equipment on board in case something broke or malfunctioned. The contingency urinals certainly came in handy.
Over the course of the flight, Orion successfully performed all of its deep-space operations, life support checks, and its manual proximity operations demonstration, but there would be one last test before its mission came to an end.
During the Artemis 1 atmospheric reentry, Orion’s heat shield sustained significant damage. A similar outcome on Artemis 2 could have had deadly consequences. Reentry subjects Orion’s exterior to extreme aerodynamic deceleration forces and temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), so if the heat shield had suffered a significant structural breach, the Artemis 2 astronauts would have been in grave danger.
Fortunately, this critical hardware performed beautifully as Orion came hurtling back to Earth 30 times faster than the speed of sound. All four astronauts emerged from the capsule in good health and high spirits. This was the result of years of work by NASA engineers who investigated the cause of the Artemis 1 heat shield damage and designed a solution.
The heat shield investigation revealed that the issue was related to the “skip” reentry profile, wherein Orion dipped into Earth’s atmosphere, bounced back out, and reentered again. Between the dips, heating decreased, causing heat and gases to build up inside the heat shield’s Avocat material. Because Avocat is impermeable, it couldn’t release the gases, and this led to cracking and uneven shedding of the shield’s outer layer.
Rather than modifying the heat shield itself before Artemis 2, engineers instead changed the reentry profile such that Orion would reenter the atmosphere at a steeper angle, spending less time in the environment where the damage occurred during Artemis 1.
“It absolutely, 100% worked,” Frieling said. When he saw Orion’s heat shield in person for the first time after the capsule splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California, “it looked absolutely pristine,” he added.
His assessment was affirmed during a recent meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), during which members reviewed the Artemis 2 heat shield’s performance, Ars Technica reports. There were more than 100 char loss sites across the heat shield after Artemis 1, and some were more than an inch deep. After Artemis 2, NASA observed only about nine char sites.
Why they did it
The fate of NASA’s Artemis program rested on the success of Artemis 2. Validating the crewed capability of both the SLS and Orion was a key prerequisite for a future lunar landing and therefore essential to the agency’s goal of returning astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
But if NASA already sent astronauts to the Moon decades ago, what’s the point of going back? Well, this time, the agency plans to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. NASA believes building a Moon base near the lunar south pole will strengthen American leadership in space, lead to scientific discoveries, drive innovation with industry and international collaborators, and prepare humanity for missions to Mars.
China is also eyeing this particular piece of lunar real estate for its own Moon base, so the U.S. is pushing to get there first. While no one nation can exercise sovereignty or claim ownership over the Moon under international law, whoever wins the new space race will gain a first-mover advantage. That means the first government to plant its flag (or re-plant it, in America’s case) on the lunar surface will get to set operational norms, secure strategic high ground, and nab first dibs on resources.
Why they’re a winner
Artemis 2 was so much more than a test flight. While the technical significance of validating the SLS and Orion’s crewed capabilities cannot be overstated, the mission’s greater significance lies in demonstrating that the Moon is once again within humanity’s reach.
This mission was not only the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo era but also the farthest crewed flight in history. At the heart of this achievement was Orion, whose remarkable performance was made possible by the countless people who worked to prepare the spacecraft for such a journey. Through cooperation, dedication, and determination, they overcame some of the most difficult engineering challenges in human spaceflight.
From its life-support systems to its ability to withstand the intense heat of reentry, every part of Orion had to perform reliably across a 695,000-mile (1 million-kilometer) journey. In doing so, the mission marked the beginning of a new chapter in human spaceflight.
“I think for me, the takeaway is that we can really do amazing things when we all work together,” Frieling said.
What’s next
With Artemis 2 complete, NASA is now preparing for Artemis 3, designed to test the agency’s commercial Moon landers in space for the first time.
During the mission, currently slated to launch in 2027, the SLS rocket will once again launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft. They will venture to low Earth orbit, where Orion will attempt to rendezvous and dock with at least one test version of the two landers built by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
SpaceX plans to test Starship V3, which will serve as the basis for the Starship Human Landing System (HLS). Blue Origin will test its planned HLS crew cabin, based on the current architecture for its Blue Moon Mark 2 crew lander. Up to two of the Artemis 3 astronauts will don their spacesuits and open the hatch to enter the Blue Origin test lander.
This mission will be the last before NASA attempts to land astronauts on the Moon with Artemis 4. Artemis 2 has shown that the SLS and Orion are up to the task. Now, it’s just a matter of whether the commercial landers will be ready too.
The team
Gizmodo congratulates the entire Artemis 2 team for their invaluable contributions and for taking NASA deeper into this exciting new chapter in lunar exploration.
Click here to see all of the winners of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair.
