NASA avoids quantifying risks for Artemis II mission

There is no doubt that astronauts on Artemis II will face significant risks during their journey around the Moon and back to Earth, but NASA is refraining from publicly quantifying those risks, according to a report published by Space.com.

NASA said on March 12 that it is targeting a launch for Artemis II as early as April 1. The mission is expected to last about 10 days, CE Report quotes AGERPRES.

All crewed space missions carry inherent risks. However, Artemis II will be only the second mission in the Artemis program and the first to carry astronauts, meaning there is insufficient data to accurately quantify the risks, NASA officials said.

“I wouldn’t give a number,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Directorate, during a press briefing following the mission readiness review.

Reporters repeatedly pressed Glaze and John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis II mission management team, to clarify how risky the mission is.

Honeycutt noted that historically, new rockets have had about a 50% success rate on their first flight. That would have been the expectation for Artemis I, which ultimately succeeded by sending an uncrewed Orion capsule into lunar orbit and back in late 2022.

For regularly flown human spaceflight programs, failure rates may drop to around 2% — or 1 in 50 — after the second or third launch, Honeycutt added. However, Artemis missions are not launched at a regular cadence, with a gap of roughly 3.5 years between Artemis I and Artemis II.

“That means we are probably not at a 1-in-50 risk level for this mission… but we are also no longer at a 1-in-2 level as we were for Artemis I,” Honeycutt said.

“We are very careful not to put probabilistic numbers on the table for this mission, given the limited amount of data,” he added.

The range outlined by Honeycutt aligns with figures recently published by NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG), which estimated a failure risk of about 1 in 30 during a crewed Artemis lunar mission and 1 in 40 during operations on the Moon.

The report also compared these risks with other NASA programs. For instance, the risk is estimated at 1 in 200 for a 210-day commercial crew mission to the International Space Station, typically conducted by SpaceX using the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. Boeing also holds a contract with NASA but has yet to conduct an operational crewed flight to the ISS.

By comparison, the risk of crew loss during the Apollo program was estimated at 1 in 10. NASA’s space shuttle program (1981–2011) was initially believed to have a 1-in-100 risk, though later assessments suggested it was closer to 1 in 10 during early flights.

Honeycutt also pointed to additional uncertainties due to limited data and the wide range of hazards involved in human spaceflight. NASA models identify micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD) as the single greatest risk to crewed missions.

He referenced past tragedies such as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, which together claimed the lives of 14 astronauts, underscoring the unpredictable nature of spaceflight risks.