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The four astronauts who flew around the moon and back in the North Atlantic Space Agency's Artemis II mission claimed their re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere went smoothly. However, the commander of NASA's historic Artemis II mission reported some charring on the Orion capsule's vital heat shield.

The team consisted of Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist)As their gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule circled the moon's far side, the four Artemis II astronauts completed a nearly ten-day test journey that ended last Friday when they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. This was the furthest humans have ever traveled in space.

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The high-stakes mission witnessed the Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule circle down into Earth's atmosphere at about 32 times the speed of sound. It was a critical test before NASA intends to deploy it once more for a pre-lunar landing journey in Earth's orbit the following year. In the crew's first press conference since coming back to Earth, Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman told reporters, "We came in fast, and we came in hot."

NASA engineers will look across a lot of data showing the Orion vehicle's performance in the months after the mission. The heat shield of the capsule, a vital barrier that shields the crew from temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) during the descent from space, is likely to be of particular interest to them.

Orion's heat shield suffered significantly more damage during the 2022 Artemis I unmanned mission than NASA had anticipated, exhibiting tiny fissures and several layers burned off by its re-entry. This led to a thorough two-year analysis.

NASA did not upgrade the heat shield, but it changed the angle and trajectory in which the Artemis II crew entered Earth's atmosphere to reduce heat.

Wiseman said he and mission pilot Victor Glover "maybe saw two moments of a touch of char loss" during re-entry.

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When they examined the capsule on the naval ship that recovered them from the ocean, Wiseman said he saw "a little bit of char loss on what's called the shoulder," referring to the edge of the heat shield.

Photos of the capsule after the Artemis II crew's return captured an unusual white mark on the edge of the heat shield, but NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman downplayed concerns and said it had behaved similarly in high-heat ground testing.

"No chunks missing," Isaacman told Reuters on Monday, saying he has seen underwater photos of the heat shield bobbing in the ocean shortly after splashdown. "The heat shield performed as expected, and I'm thrilled, because now we're done with this thing."

Glover described the crew's re-entry as "a very intense 13 minutes and 36 seconds."

The crew's re-entry, according to Glover, was "a very intense 13 minutes and 36 seconds."

The crew's highest speed at re-entry, according to NASA officials at the time, was 24,664 mph (39,692 kph), or around Mach 32, 130 mph less than the Apollo 10 record set in 1969 for the fastest human travel.

Although the agency's Space Launch System rocket launches Orion, a future crew will use the capsule to dock with moon landers built by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX. These landers are scheduled to land on the moon as early as 2028, though technical issues with both landers may cause that date to be pushed back.

However, Glover informed reporters on Thursday that Orion's onboard screens indicated they had hit Mach 38.89, or 29,839 miles per hour (48,021 kph). Because it is difficult to estimate speeds in space, he noted, NASA might provide a revised figure "when we figure it out."

 


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