Is Orion’s heat shield really safe? New NASA chief conducts final review on eve of flight.

Summary

Olivas is very credible on these issues. He was asked by the NASA leadership in late 2023, before the independent review team was formally named, to provide a second set of eyes on the space agency’s heat shield work. He saw all of the investigative data in real time. Although not formally a member, he sat in on the review team’s meetings through 2024 before that process ended. Afterward, he had some lingering questions he felt were unresolved by that process. A few weeks ago, he told Pearlman and me he would be reluctant to fly on Orion. It was a stunning admission. Isaacman appeared to take these concerns seriously. In advance of Thursday’s meeting, he engaged with Olivas to hear him out and share information about what NASA’s engineers had done over the last 18 months to resolve some of the independent review team’s questions. These included char loss very early in Orion’s reentry. After Thursday’s meeting, Olivas told me he had changed his mind, expressing appreciation and admiration for the in-depth engineering work done by the NASA team. He would now fly on Orion. Camarda, another former shuttle astronaut, was less effusive. He has been very public with his criticism of NASA’s handling of the Orion heat shield. He told me in December 2024 that the space agency and its leadership team should be “ashamed.” Unlike Olivas, however, he has been on the outside the whole time. NASA had kept Camarda, 73, at arm’s length, and he felt disrespected. Given his credentials—the aerospace engineer spent two decades working on thermal protection for the space shuttle and hypersonic vehicles–Camarda could be a potent voice of skepticism leading up to the Artemis II launch. After the meeting, I asked Camarda whether he felt any better about flying crew on the Artemis II heat shield. “I would never be happy accepting a workaround and flying something that I know is the worst version of that heat shield we could possibly fly and hoping that the workaround is going to fix it,” Cam...