After circling moon for the past three weeks, NASA’s Orion capsule crashed by parachute yesterday morning off the coast of Baja California in Mexico near Guadalupe, marking the end of the Artemis program’s first major lunar mission. Orion was later picked up by a recovery team and sent to port in San Diego, where it was loaded into the well of the Navy ship USS. Portland. With Artemis 1 in the books, NASA will scrutinize the capsule’s performance, ensuring the safety of future crewed lunar trips, including the highly anticipated moon landing. expected in 2026.
“It’s a historic achievement because we’re now heading back into deep space with a new generation,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after Orion’s collision. “This is a definite date. It is something that marks new technology, a whole new generation of astronauts, a vision for the future.”
During Sunday’s descent, three parachutes were fully inflated, braking the spacecraft to slow it down from 25,000 miles per hour to just 20 as it soared through the atmosphere. . But now, the Artemis team will study all the parameters of the capsule in detail. “First we will look at: Does the heat shield do its job of removing heat and taking care of the heat pulse so that the pressure inside the cabin remains moderate between 70 degrees for the astronauts. when they’re in there?” Sarah D’Souza, vice president of systems at NASA’s Ames Research Center, who helped develop Orion’s thermal protection system.
That invasive heat shield is made up of thick blocks connected together with an epoxy resin material called Avcoat that will burn out when the shield withstands scorching temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about half that. temperature of the sun’s surface. They wanted to make sure, she said, that “we have a design that will keep people safe.”
Nelson also emphasized human safety and habitability during a press conference after the water spray. “This time we go back to the moon to learn how to live, to work, to invent, to create, to continue going into space to explore more,” he said. “The plan is to be ready to send humans to Mars by the late 2030s, and beyond.”
Orion was originally scheduled to crash off the coast of San Diego, but weather forecasts there made that plan impossible and the flight commander adjusted its trajectory. That flexibility is owed to a maneuver the team has attempted to call a “skip” return, in which Orion descends part of the atmosphere to an altitude of about 40 miles, then jumps upward and toward the sky. first like a pebble gliding through a pond, then into the atmosphere. atmosphere for good. That kind of return also helps slow down the spacecraft.
The return flight brought Orion within 0.02 degrees of the team’s expected flight angle, and the crash into the sea was almost a black spot, about 2 nautical miles from its target landing site. physical. As the slides drift down, all five balloon-like bags inflate, keeping Orion upright in the water. NASA and Navy officials on the recovery team — in helicopters and boats — then approached, preparing to take the spacecraft and stow it in the belly of the USS Portland for the trip back to shore.
