Article: Flying to the Moon for the first time in 54 years is risky—but how risky? | Meridiano

Image for Article: Flying to the Moon for the first time in 54 years is risky—but how risky?

Article Details

Title

Article: Flying to the Moon for the first time in 54 years is risky—but how risky?

Impact Score

5 / 10

AI Summary (Processed Content)

NASA officials were hesitant to quantify the specific risks of the upcoming Artemis II Moon mission during a press conference. They emphasized the mission's novelty, as it will be the first human flight to the lunar vicinity since 1972, traveling far beyond the International Space Station using a rocket and spacecraft with only one prior joint flight.

The agency completed a probabilistic risk assessment but questioned the absolute value of a single bottom-line number, preferring to use such analyses for relative comparisons of risk. The mission's unprecedented nature makes precise risk calculations difficult.

The main topics covered are the inherent risks of the Artemis II mission, NASA's reluctance to provide a specific risk quantification, and the reasons for that reluctance due to the mission's novelty and limited flight data.

Original URL

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/flying-to-the-moon-for-the-first-time-in-54-years-is-risky-but-how-risky/

Source Feed

Ars Technica

Published Date

2026-03-14 00:17

Fetched Date

2026-03-13 21:30

Processed Date

2026-03-13 21:31

Embedding Status

Present

Cluster ID

Not Clustered

Raw Extracted Content

When talking about risk during a press conference on Thursday, the NASA officials in charge of the upcoming Artemis II Moon mission hedged their answers.
Reporters’ questions on the risks were certainly valid and appropriate. In an open society, it is vital to set expectations for any hazardous venture such as spaceflight—most importantly for the astronauts actually making the journey, but also for NASA’s workforce, the White House, lawmakers, and members of the public paying for the endeavor.
What’s more, Artemis II will be the first mission since 1972 to fly humans to the vicinity of the Moon. This is not following the well-trodden yet perilous path that astronauts take to reach the International Space Station, just a few hundred miles above Earth.
Artemis II will travel more than 1,000 times farther from Earth than the ISS, departing on a trajectory taking the mission several thousand miles beyond the far side of the Moon. The mission will last nine days from liftoff in Florida to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The four-person crew will ride a rocket and spacecraft—the Space Launch System and Orion—that have flown together just once before. The sheer novelty of the mission makes it difficult to quantify the risk, NASA officials said Thursday.
Load and go
With just a single data point from flight testing—the unpiloted Artemis I demo mission in 2022—NASA managers were reluctant to publicize the bottom-line number from the probabilistic risk assessment for Artemis II.
Lori Glaze, NASA’s acting associate administrator for exploration system development, said the agency completed an assessment for Artemis II, but questioned the exercise’s usefulness.
“I think sometimes we get tricked into believing that those numbers are somehow really telling us something critically important,” Glaze said. “I think they’re valuable. I think we can do things in a relative sense to measure what’s more risky or less risky.”