Joey Roulette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., April 16 (Reuters) – Astronauts orbiting and returning to the moon on NASA’s landmark Artemis 2 mission said their reentry into Earth’s atmosphere was smooth, but the mission commander described some scorching on the Orion capsule’s critical heat shield.
Four Artemis 2 astronauts landed in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, concluding a nearly 10-day test flight in which they sailed around the far side of the moon in their gummy-shaped Orion capsule, reaching the farthest distance ever reached by humans.
Reentering Earth’s atmosphere at about 32 times the speed of sound, the final step in the high-risk mission is a critical test of the Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule before NASA plans to use it again in Earth orbit next year for another pre-lunar flight.
“We came quickly and we were enthusiastic,” Artemis 2 mission commander Reed Wiseman told reporters at the first press conference since the astronauts returned to Earth.
In the months following the flight, NASA engineers will comb through reams of data about how well Orion will perform. They may keep a close eye on the capsule’s heat shield, a critical barrier that protects astronauts from temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) during descent from space.
Orion’s heat shield suffered far more damage than NASA expected during the 2022 ArtemisI unmanned mission, developing small cracks and scorching some layers from reentry, leading to an intense two-year investigation.
NASA did not upgrade the heat shield, but changed the angle and trajectory of the Artemis 2 crew’s entry into Earth’s atmosphere to reduce heat.
Wiseman said he and mission pilot Victor Glover “saw maybe two slightly scorched moments” during reentry.
Wiseman said that when they inspected the capsule from the warship that salvaged them from the sea, he saw a bit of burn on the “so-called shoulder,” referring to the edge of the heat shield.
Falling at least 32 times the speed of sound
Photos of the capsule after the Artemis 2 crew returned showed an unusual white mark on the edge of the heat shield, but NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman downplayed concerns and said it behaved similarly during high-temperature ground tests.
“No debris is missing,” Isaacman told Reuters on Monday, saying he had seen underwater photos of the heat shield floating in the ocean shortly after splashdown. “The heat shield performed as expected and I’m excited because now we’ve done it.”
Glover described the crew’s reentry as “a very intense 13 minutes and 36 seconds.”
NASA officials said at the time that the astronauts’ top speed when reentering the atmosphere was 24,664 mph (39,692 km/h), or about Mach 32, 130 mph lower than the fastest human flight record set by Apollo 10 in 1969.
But Glover told reporters Thursday that Orion’s onboard screens showed they reached a speed of Mach 38.89, or 29,839 miles per hour. He added that NASA may release a new number “when we figure it out” because measuring speed in space is challenging.
After atmospheric friction slows them down, an initial set of parachutes slows them down further once they enter the Earth’s lower atmosphere before separating before a final set of parachutes takes them to the ocean surface at a gentle 17 mph.
When the initial parachute was severed, Glover said, “We went back into free fall… I’ve never BASE jumped, I’ve never skydived, but that’s what it feels like if you jump backwards off a skyscraper.”
While Orion is the capsule that carries humans to and from space, launched from Earth on the agency’s Space Launch System rocket, future astronauts will use the capsule to dock with lunar landers built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, landing on the moon as soon as 2028, although engineering challenges with both landers could push that date back.
The landers will be tested in Earth orbit for the first time on the Artemis III mission planned for next year.
Wiseman said he personally believes, “They can put Artemis 3 Orion on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the astronauts will be in good shape.”
(Reporting by Joey Roulett; Editing by Jamie Freed)
