{"id":594783,"date":"2026-04-09T03:23:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/594783\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T03:23:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:23:16","slug":"astronauts-face-heat-shield-danger-on-return-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/594783\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronauts face heat shield danger on return to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Angus<\/p>\n

April 9, 2026 \u2014 11:40am<\/p>\n

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The astronauts hurtling back from the moon face the gravest danger of their journey in its final 15 minutes, when they\u2019ll scorch through the atmosphere relying on a 7.5 centimetre-thick heat shield that failed during its last test.<\/p>\n

The Orion spacecraft will also rocket back to Earth at 40,000 kilometres per hour on an intense and untrialled trajectory.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Artemis II astronauts are relying on a shield that failed during a 2022 test run.NASA<\/p>\n

The Artemis I mission in 2022 sent Orion on a test run to the moon and back without astronauts. The glaring exception to the mission\u2019s success was the chaotic breakdown of the capsule\u2019s heat shield when it re-entered the Earth\u2019s atmosphere in a fiery cocoon of plasma burning at 2500 degrees.<\/p>\n

Former NASA engineer and astronaut Charlie Camarda branded the shield a \u201cfailure\u201d, and wrote to the agency claiming technical and organisational problems with Orion represented a \u201cserious risk\u201d to the Artemis II astronauts.<\/p>\n

Camarda went to space on NASA\u2019s first flight after seven astronauts died on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 after its heat shield failed. He told the ABC he fears a repeat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The heat shields are made from a material called Avcoat, which forms a honeycomb of ultra-light tiles made from silica fibres encased in resin.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe heat shield of Artemis I was marred by cracks and more than 100 missing chunks.NASA\"NASANASA found the \u201cskip re-entry\u201d trialled on Artemis I was the reason for the damage.NASA<\/p>\n

The material is designed to burn off when the spacecraft travelling at the extraordinary speed of 11 kilometres per second \u2013 more than 30 times the speed of sound \u2013 hits the atmosphere and generates meteoric temperatures via friction hot enough to melt steel.<\/p>\n

The \u201cablative\u201d shield, physics expert Ed Macaulay explained in The Conversation<\/a>, is meant to burn away evenly and carry heat away from returning spacecraft.<\/p>\n

But the Artemis I capsule splashed down on Earth marred with charred cracks and about 100 missing chunks.<\/p>\n

Investigations revealed the explosive setback was down to Artemis I\u2019s \u201cskip re-entry\u201d, a first-of-its-kind trajectory that saw the spacecraft \u201cskip\u201d off the upper atmosphere like a stone across a lake before making its final descent.<\/p>\n

\"NASANASA is opting for a more direct entry for Artemis II compared to the longer skip entry.NASA<\/p>\n

The aim of the manoeuvre was to gradually reduce the speed, heat and g-forces experienced by astronauts with a two-phased descent compared to one scorching plunge.<\/p>\n

There was an unintended consequence. When the capsule first hit the atmosphere, its shield began to burn and generate gas. When Orion skipped back up into space, the shield\u2019s melting resin hardened, trapping the gas.<\/p>\n

Once the capsule again descended<\/a>, the gas violently expanded and sent chunks blasting off the shield.<\/p>\n

\"ArtemisArtemis II astronauts, from left, Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch and Victor Glover gather for an interview en route to the moon.NASA via AP<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worry was that, should this happen again on the crewed Artemis II mission, it could expose the interior of the capsule to dangerously high temperatures,\u201d Macaulay wrote.<\/p>\n

NASA has said temperatures inside the Artemis I capsule held steady at about 23 to 24 degrees during the shield failure, and any crew inside would have been safe.<\/p>\n

The agency has since developed a more porous shield material that would better release trapped gas. But it wasn\u2019t ready in time for Artemis II, which will return to Earth with the original shield.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Australia\u2019s<\/a><\/p>\n

To solve the problem, NASA has opted for a shorter \u201cskip\u201d time and a more direct re-entry.<\/p>\n

The risk of gas generation with a shorter, more intense re-entry is \u201csufficiently low\u201d that NASA believes it won\u2019t overwhelm the protective layer of char that builds up on the shield, the agency\u2019s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya told a press briefing at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

But it means astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will undertake the most dangerous part of their mission on a trajectory never tried with Orion.<\/p>\n

Before NASA announced it would change the spacecraft\u2019s trajectory, Glover, the pilot of the Artemis II mission, told technology news site Ars Technica<\/a>: \u201cThere\u2019s no guarantee that changing the trajectory is the answer. It will change something, but it won\u2019t necessarily fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Artemis II splashdown is expected at 10.07am on Saturday (AEST).<\/p>\n

The Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"AngusAngus Dalton<\/a> is the science reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 9, 2026 \u2014 11:40am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-594783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}