Comment by pclmulqdq
20 hours ago
There was no heat shield issue, it was investigated and the resolved: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-delays-...
There is an issue with another dependency for Artemis 2 and 3, though - Starship is nowhere near where it needs to be.
"There was no heat shield issue" and "it was investigated and resolved" cannot both be true. There was a heat shield issue; they investigated for two years, and it has caused a delay.
Artemis II has no Starship dependency. It's entirely SLS/Orion.
Your own article agrees with me:
> Artemis 2 likely would've been delayed by a year or so, to late 2026, had a heat-shield replacement been required, NASA officials said today. But the mission team still needs more time than originally envisioned to get Orion up to crew-carrying speed, explaining the roughly six-month push.
> "The heat shield was installed in June 2023, and the root cause investigation took place in parallel to other assembly and testing activities to preserve as much schedule as possible."