After a close flyby of the moon and venturing further into space than any previous habitable spacecraft, NASA’s Orion spacecraft is set to touch down on Sunday in the final test of a high-stakes mission called Artemis. As it hurtles through Earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) per hour, the rubber-shaped traveler will have to withstand temperatures of 2,800 degrees Celsius (5,000 Fahrenheit) — about half the temperature on the surface of the Sun.
A splashdown in the Pacific near Mexico’s Guadalupe Island is scheduled for 1739 GMT (9:39 a.m. local time). Achieving success in this mission of just over 25 days is key for NASA, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon and prepare for another trip, one day, to Mars. So far, the first test of this unmanned spacecraft has gone very well.
But it’s only in the final minutes of this journey that the real challenge comes: to see if Orion’s heat shield, the largest ever built, will actually hold up. “It’s a safety-critical device. It’s designed to protect the spacecraft and the passengers, the astronauts on board. So the heat shield has to work,” Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin said. The first test of the capsule was conducted in 2014, but then the capsule remained in Earth orbit, so it re-entered the atmosphere at a slower rate, about 20,000 miles per hour.
Helicopters, divers and boats
A US Navy ship, the USS Portland, was stationed in the Pacific to retrieve the Orion capsule in an exercise that NASA has been rehearsing for years. Helicopters and inflatable boats will also be deployed for this task. The falling spacecraft will be slowed first by the Earth’s atmosphere and then by a network of 11 parachutes until it slows down to 30 kilometers per hour when it finally hits the blue waters of the Pacific.
Once there, NASA will let Orion float for two hours — much longer than if there were astronauts inside — to collect data. “We’ll see how the heat soaks back into the crew module and how that affects the temperature inside,” said Jim Geffre, NASA’s Orion vehicle integration manager. Divers will then attach cables to the Orion to pull it up to the USS Portland, an amphibious transport docking vessel whose rear will be partially submerged. This water will be pumped out slowly so the spacecraft can rest on a platform designed to hold it.
All of this should take about four to six hours from the time the craft first splashed. The Navy ship will then head to San Diego, California, where the spacecraft will be unloaded a few days later. When the spacecraft returns to Earth, it will have traveled 1.4 million miles since its Nov. 16 launch, aided by a behemoth rocket called the SLS. At its closest point to the Moon, it flew less than 130 kilometers from the surface. And it broke the distance record for a habitable capsule when it ventured 268,000 miles (432,000 kilometers) from our planet.
Artemis 2 and 3
Recovering the spacecraft will allow NASA to collect data that is critical for future missions. This includes information about the state of the craft after its flight, data from monitors that measure acceleration and vibration, and the performance of a special vest worn on a dummy in the capsule to test how to protect people from radiation during spaceflight. Some of the capsule’s components should be good for reuse in the Artemis 2 mission, which is already in advanced planning.
This next mission, planned for 2024, will take a crew towards the moon, but still without landing on it. NASA is expected to name the astronauts selected for the trip soon. Artemis 3, planned for 2025, will see a spacecraft land on the moon’s south pole, which contains water in the form of ice, for the first time. Only 12 people – all white – have walked on the moon. They did this during the Apollo missions, the last of which was in 1972.
Artemis plans to send a woman and a person of color to the moon for the first time. NASA’s goal is to ensure a permanent human presence on the Moon through a base on its surface and a space station orbiting it. Learning how to live on the moon should help engineers develop the technology for a one-year trip to Mars, perhaps in the late 2030s.
Read Now :<strong>A man accused of making the bomb that killed 270 people now in custody in US</strong>
