NASA Craft To Face Heat-Shield Test on Its First Astronaut Flight Next Year (msn.com) 18
An anonymous reader shares a report: Getting to space is hard. In many ways, getting back is even harder. NASA soon aims to pull off the kind of re-entry it last conducted more than 50 years ago: safely returning astronauts to Earth after they fly to the moon and back. The mission is a big moment for NASA, which will put a crew on its Orion ship for the first time. The flight will test the spacecraft's heat shield, designed to protect the astronauts on board.
Re-entries of vehicles from orbit remain one of the high-stakes parts of any human spaceflight, given the stress they put on spacecraft. In 2003, NASA's Columbia Space Shuttle broke apart as it came back from low-Earth orbit due to a breach on the vehicle that occurred during launch. All seven astronauts on board were killed. Orion will be coming back to Earth from much further away than low-Earth orbit, where all recent human spaceflights have been conducted. That means its velocity and the energy it needs to disperse will be greater, putting even more stress on the heat shield.
During a test flight in 2022 that didn't include astronauts, Orion's heat shield didn't perform as expected. That sparked worries about crew safety on future missions, prompting NASA to investigate and address what happened. NASA will launch Orion with the astronauts on board as soon as February. [...] When the vehicle initially re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, it will be traveling around 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The Orion craft, developed by Lockheed Martin for NASA, has a shield that is almost 17 feet in diameter. Installed on the vehicle's underside, the shield is covered in what is called an "ablative" material, which is designed to shift heat away from the craft during re-entry by burning off in a controlled manner.
Re-entries of vehicles from orbit remain one of the high-stakes parts of any human spaceflight, given the stress they put on spacecraft. In 2003, NASA's Columbia Space Shuttle broke apart as it came back from low-Earth orbit due to a breach on the vehicle that occurred during launch. All seven astronauts on board were killed. Orion will be coming back to Earth from much further away than low-Earth orbit, where all recent human spaceflights have been conducted. That means its velocity and the energy it needs to disperse will be greater, putting even more stress on the heat shield.
During a test flight in 2022 that didn't include astronauts, Orion's heat shield didn't perform as expected. That sparked worries about crew safety on future missions, prompting NASA to investigate and address what happened. NASA will launch Orion with the astronauts on board as soon as February. [...] When the vehicle initially re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, it will be traveling around 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The Orion craft, developed by Lockheed Martin for NASA, has a shield that is almost 17 feet in diameter. Installed on the vehicle's underside, the shield is covered in what is called an "ablative" material, which is designed to shift heat away from the craft during re-entry by burning off in a controlled manner.
Sounds Fun (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA (Score:1)
N eed
A nother
S even
A stronauts
Surprisingly little fanfair for a vanity project (Score:1)
The (un)stated purpose of this exercise is to show the Chinese we can get back to the moon before even having our morning coffee.
In that light, I can understand the casual nature of this stuff. On the other hand...space flight *is* cool, and I might like a little more hype for something that at its heart is about hype.
Testing, testing, ... (Score:2)
But, really, this is the first crewed flight of the Orion capsule, so it's fair to say that a lot is being tested. Prior test flights [wikipedia.org] have put most of the subsystems through their paces (for instance: propulsion, guidance, power). And everything has been tested like hell on the g
Seems a bit rash (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we used to demand an unmanned mission that was successful from end to end before we put people on the vehicle?
Guinea Pig Express (Score:1)
Indeed. TFA said during the last unmanned test the heat shield had problems. They should have a near perfect unmanned test before testing with staff.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Good point! My Aspergers blinded me to that initially.
Re: (Score:3)
Not really, depends on the severity of the issue and whether it has been understood adequately enough.
A few of the unmanned Apollo test flights had significant issues for which fixes were only tested in the subsequent crewed flight, for example.
The Starliner capsule had so many issues across multiple missions that it requires a successful uncrewed mission - its the exception, not the rule.
Re: (Score:2)
Mercury and Apollo didn't, but they were in a rush to beat the Soviets. I guess it depends if you think the risk is worth it to beat the Chinese. Mercury came close to losing people, Apollo did but only on the ground.
The only times people have died during re-entry have been the Soviets in the 60s, and then the Shuttle due to heat shield damage that they knew about but couldn't do much with.
Old Was Honeycomb filled with Silicone (Score:2)
Why are they doing this on a manned flight? (Score:2)
Nice. DEI crew gonna... (Score:1)
Since in space they have to eat... (Score:2)
And to think of all the craft that made it back... (Score:2)