This market closes when Artemis 2 returns to Earth (resolves YES), a member of its crew dies during the mission (resolves NO), or the mission is scrapped before T–0 (resolves N/A), whichever occurs first.
Related markets:
/jks/will-artemis-2-return-to-earth-with (this question)
/jks/will-artemis-3-return-to-earth-with
/jks/will-artemis-4-return-to-earth-with
/jks/will-artemis-5-return-to-earth-with
/jks/will-artemis-6-return-to-earth-with
Update 2025-08-29 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - If Artemis 2 launches with no humans on board (uncrewed), this market will resolve N/A.
Update 2026-04-02 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): "Return to Earth" is defined as the moment of splashdown.
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Remaining critical event schedule in Pacific Daylight Time (UTC–7):
16:33 PDT - Service module jettison
16:37 PDT - Crew module raise burn (last chance to adjust angle of attack)
16:53:30 PDT - Capsule reaches 400,000 feet altitude
16:53:54 PDT - Begin planned communications blackout
16:59:55 PDT - End of blackout
17:04:44 PDT - Main parachute deployment
17:07:08 PDT - Splashdown
@SEBsauce That's what they thought before space shuttle Columbia reentered, despite knowing about the event that had damaged the heat shield, ultimately leading to the death of everyone on board.
Hopefully you're right.
@SimonWestlake alright here's my take on the evidence:
Charles Camarda seems to be the most qualified critic of heat shield safety by far; he was a NASA researcher when the Space Shuttle disasters happened and likely has a good understanding of the culture failings, he worked on thermal structures at NASA, and he was one of the people who was actually invited to review data that's non-public. His LinkedIn post criticising the engineering analysis (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/charlescamarda_nasa-artemisheatshield-orionheatshield-activity-7415490596121067520-ZtzE/ ) identifies that the models NASA uses are insufficient, in that they don't cover e.g. multiphysics behaviour or aren't well-validated. I'll assign ~2/3 odds that he's reporting this fact accurately; https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/former-flight-director-who-reviewed-orion-heat-shield-data-says-there-was-no-dissent/ contradicts Camarda on how widespread dissent was on the IRT so I'm hesitant to give full trust.
Conditional on Camarda's comments being accurate, I'll assign a 50% chance that poor modelling leads to unexpected spallation of the heat shield on re-entry. This should be a fairly high chance since Artemis I had spallation, but on the other hand the simplified model was able to reproduce the spallation and presumably on the new trajectory, this no longer happens. I.e., the simplified test provides evidence against unmodeled physics causing problems, which should reduce the chances of spallation happening on Artemis II.
Conditional on spallation happening on re-entry, I give a 10% chance this results in loss of crew. Given that Artemis I still survived even with heat shield damage, and that NASA has done testing to see what happens to the underlying composite material if the heat shield fails on re-entry (see "what if we're wrong" section in https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasa-chief-reviews-orion-heat-shield-expresses-full-confidence-in-it-for-artemis-ii/ ), it's unlikely that spallation will kill the crew.
Multiplying all these odds together gives ~3% of loss of crew, which matches market value. To be clear - this is still astonishingly high, and should have been grounds for not proceeding with launch. But we also know that the Space Shuttle, as dangerous as it was, "only" had 2/135 = ~1.5% failure rate.
@FastFourier Some additional thoughts/different estimation approach:
- There's high likelihood that the culture at NASA is similar to that just before Challenger and Columbia. Part of this is evidence from Camarda's reporting, but also historically, NASA has had a disaster-followed-by-safety-culture-change every 20 years or so (Apollo 1 fire in 1967, Challenger in 1986, Columbia in 2003), suggesting that after 20 years, enough people have cycled through management that the safety lessons are forgotten. So, call it 80% chance that NASA once again has a poor culture when it comes to making sure risks are addressed adequately.
- Conditional on poor culture, what are the chances of loss of spacecraft? Space Shuttle has a 2/135 failure rate, so you can use ~1.5% as a base rate. Alternatively, counting from the start of the program, the first failure (Challenger) was on the 25th flight, giving a 4% base rate. I'd argue the latter is more accurate, since that represents a base rate starting from a clean-sheet design (same as Orion), and after Challenger there were engineering design changes that improved safety.
In any case, combining these odds gives somewhere from 1.2 to 3.2% chance of loss of crew.
