Artemis II was the first time people climbed onboard the Orion capsule, went to space, circled the Moon, came back, and made a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. It will do so many more times by the end of this decade and early into the next one, so understanding how the heat shield performed is crucial to making upcoming missions safe.<\/p>\n
The uncrewed test flight performed back in 2022 during the Artemis I mission, when the capsule was sent empty on a trip around the Moon, was cause for worry over at NASA. After splashdown and the analysis performed on the heat shield, engineers discovered unexpected char loss across the surface of the shield.<\/p>\n
Photo: NASA<\/p>\n Apparently, this was caused by the improper ventilation of the gases generated inside the shield\u2019s ablative material, the so-called Avcoat, which led to cracking and charred material breaking off here and there.<\/p>\n NASA<\/a> didn\u2019t come up with a physical solution for this problem, so instead of modifying the shield for Artemis II, it rethought the reentry trajectory by shortening the maximum downrange distance the spacecraft could fly from contact with the atmosphere to splashdown. This, in turn, meant that Orion\u2019s heat shield would spend less time in the temperature range that caused the Artemis I problems.<\/p>\n We already know this little trick worked, as all four astronauts of Artemis II came back safely, but it is only now that the American space agency has released its findings on the shield performance on reentry. And the numbers, at least, are mind-boggling.<\/p>\n As it came back down to Earth, the spacecraft hit a maximum speed of 39 times the speed of sound. If this makes more sense, that would be almost 30,000 mph (48,000 kph), which is asteroid speed.<\/p>\n Photo: NASA<\/p>\n As it rubbed against the planet\u2019s atmosphere, outside temperatures reached up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius), but the heat shield worked so well that inside temperature never got above 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius).<\/p>\n All of this was made possible thanks to the fact that the spacecraft\u2019s trajectory was right on point. NASA says the capsule entered the atmosphere only 192 feet (59 meters) off its targeted entry interface and managed to hit the water about half a mile (almost one km) off the predicted splashdown point.<\/p>\n As soon as the Artemis II Orion<\/a> was in the water, crews rushed to the scene not only to recover the crew, but also to look at the heat shield. On-site inspections revealed, as per NASA, a significant reduction in the amount of cracks and char loss compared to Artemis I.<\/p>\n As subsequent inspections showed, the 186 blocks of Avcoat that made up the Orion heat shield worked as intended, and the cracking and char loss had been reduced by a factor of ten compared to the previous flight. There were only nine spots of char loss of varying sizes on the Artemis II heat shield dish, which is significantly less than the 103 points on Artemis I.<\/p>\n Photo: NASA<\/p>\n The other major protective component of the spacecraft, the backshell, worked just as well. The 1,300 ceramic tiles that make up this protective cover on the sloped sides of the spacecraft to shield windows, vents, thrusters, and the side hatch showed no sign of overheating.<\/p>\n The findings published this week by NASA come as a welcome reassurance for the upcoming missions of the Artemis<\/a> program. The next one, Artemis III, will only head to Earth orbit, but it too will need a working heat shield to protect the four men inside when they eventually come home.<\/p>\n NASA said the heat shield for the Artemis III Orion has already been attached to the crew module earlier this summer. No design changes compared to the previous flight have been announced, but the reentry trajectory will, of course, be different.<\/p>\n![\"Artemis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/artemis-ii-heat-shield-held-its-ground-as-orion-spacecraft-plummeted-to-earth-at-asteroid-speed-thum.jpeg\" "\\"Artemis")
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