Artemis II: Building confidence in travel to Mars: Hamblen

NASA’s Artemis II mission is about amazing science and exploration around the Moon, but it is really about confidence-building.

That’s confidence-enhancement by the astronauts and scientists and engineers on the ground, but also the administrators who are hoping to get $18.8 billion, at least, in their fiscal year 2027 budget request.  That’s a 23% decrease from the $24.4 billion Congress approved for FY 2026. Decisionmakers face a many-tiered decision matrix. A chief concern: How to use Artemis in a bid to out-pace China in a settlement on the Moon and US hegemony over outer space from Earth to Moon, and even Mars, perhaps. 

Everything about the Artemis II mission has the public relations imprint of making the public and journalists also feel excited and ready for Moon explorations and a Moon settlement that could help the US get to Mars in a decade or so. There’s nothing wrong about that at all, and if you are space geek like me, you tend to go along with top global journalists asking the crew on a Wednesday night live stream from Orion, “How did you feel when…”   Reporters wanted to know what the astronauts were feeling when the crew suggested naming a crater after Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife Carroll or asking Pilot Victor Glover his thoughts on seeing the lunar terminator up close. (The terminator is the line on the Moon that divides light and darkness.)

I was always told as a younger reporter to avoid “How do you feel” questions, but in a way, with Artemis II, it is the ultimate question.

For me, I would have asked Wiseman and crew on the live call how they felt about the truncated demo of radiation shielding earlier in the day. (I waited on the line, but they only had 20 minutes.) NASA decided the crew didn’t need to move stowage to protect themselves from a solar flare’s radiation because they have practiced that enough on the ground. But the crew did demonstrate using an umbilical cord on a space suit to provide ventilation to an astronaut moving to the tight confines of a locker for greater shielding from radiation.  NASA also has elaborate HERA sensors and other sensors, including one on a Z9 camera, to detect levels of radiation. A novel AVATAR project applying each astronaut’s tissue on a small collection surface is going to detect all sorts of impact, including radiation particles, for later evaluation.

Yes, there seems to be thorough preparation for protection against solar flares, but is that preparation enough? Radiation in outer space is up to 100 times greater than on Earth, after all.  I was hoping to get a sense of how the astronauts feel about radiation in deep space, which is a long-term scary component of flying over many days to Mars someday. You can only shield the capsule so much. So, again, how do you feel? Or, how scared are you about long-term radiation exposure and risk?  I’ll get a chance to ask again someday.

Meanwhile, Commander Wiseman did talk about radiation exposure in an earlier news conference before the Artemis II launch. He said the crew had “fought pretty hard” to get the Z9 camera on board “to see what is the radiation environment in deep space going to do to the sensors on that particular camera so we can learn about that.”  He also mentioned the AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) project “so we can compare [cellular impact ] when we get back.” And he brought up all the radiation sensors in the space vehicle “monitoring the radiation environment for the entire ride out and back.”  He clearly is aware of radiation risk, but what isn’t clear if he thinks preparations and shielding are enough, yet, for future missions.  NASA had installed thousands of radiation sensors on Artemis I and had deemed the Orion spacecraft ready to protect crew in Artemis II.  

For NASA and private industry, the confidence-building exercise with Artemis II is essential to future NASA budgets and how quickly the Artemis plan moves ahead. The stage is set for Artemis III to happen in 2027, with a lunar landing by astronauts in 2028 on Artemis IV.  The timeline beyond 2028 seems far less set.  Can future astronaut teams feel safe about longer-term radiation exposure? Or can they feel safe about a million other risks involving launch and splashdown and, yes, even whether the toilet and waste storage tank will work properly?

I feel certain the crew on Artemis II answered to themselves all the questions about their own safety years ago. They likely decided to go and risk it because the mission is valuable. That attitude makes me envy their nerve and bravery.

More generally, throughout the Artemis II mission, I became more aware of how sensors of all types fundamentally build confidence in how robots and machines work and how humans can be protected from all manner of dangers, big and small.  If sensor makers and systems designers are not yet selling how sensors can build confidence, they are missing out.

Speaking of nervy: Splashdown is set for Friday at 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 p.m. PDT) off the coast of San Diego. 

–Matt Hamblen is editor of Fierce Sensors.

Note: Sensors Converge 2026 is May 5-7 in Santa Clara, CA.  Friday is the last day to get advance savings, with registration online.