The Orion spacecraft of the Artemis 1 mission has returned to Earth with a big splash. NASA celebrates success
Twenty-five and a half days after launch and 2.26 million kilometers, the Orion manned spacecraft has returned to Earth. The landing went textbook, according to commentators. All this leads us to believe that in a year and a half humans will fly towards the Moon. The composition of the Artemis 2 manned mission will be known in early 2023.
It went from 40,000 kilometers per hour to just 32 kilometers per hour in less than an hour and a half. This is how the Orion manned spacecraft, launched into space by the SLS rocket, had to decelerate in order to calmly descend to the Pacific Ocean. However, before he could do so, he had to eject the so-called service module, used for, among other things, orbital maneuvers.
Orion’s heat shield heated up to nearly 3,000 degrees Celsius.
When Orion entered the atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound, compression waves caused the ship’s outer shields to heat up to 2,760 degrees Celsius. This is half the temperature of the Sun. To cope with such extreme conditions, Orion’s heat shield underwent more than a thousand tests. It was exposed to hot and fast-moving gases to simulate the moment of entry into the atmosphere.
