Enlarge / NASA’s Orion spacecraft descends towards the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2021, on the finish of the Artemis I mission. (credit score: NASA)
NASA officers declared the Artemis I mission profitable in late 2021, and it is arduous to argue with that evaluation. The House Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft carried out practically flawlessly on an unpiloted flight that took it across the Moon and again to Earth, setting the stage for the Artemis II, this system’s first crew mission.
However one of many issues engineers noticed on Artemis I that did not fairly match expectations was a difficulty with the Orion spacecraft’s warmth protect. Because the capsule streaked again into Earth’s ambiance on the finish of the mission, the warmth protect ablated, or burned off, in a distinct method than predicted by laptop fashions.
Extra of the charred materials than anticipated got here off the warmth protect through the Artemis I reentry, and the way in which it got here off was considerably uneven, NASA officers stated. Orion’s warmth protect is product of a fabric referred to as Avcoat, which is designed to burn off because the spacecraft plunges into the ambiance at 25,000 mph (40,000 km per hour). Getting back from the Moon, Orion encountered temperatures as much as 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius), hotter than a spacecraft sees when it reenters the ambiance from low-Earth orbit.
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