LIVE. Bemanning Artemis II landt op aarde (met experimenteel hitteschild dat vorige keer teleurstelde)

Hopen we dan!

Makkers we onderbreken uw nacht voor onze vier Sterrenzeilers die met 40.000 kilometer per uur en 3.000 graden Celsius een deur intrappen. En da's spannend, want het hitteschild van de Orion-capsule bleek tijdens de onbemande Artemis I minder goed te presteren dan voorgangers: "Orion’s AVCOAT has been slightly reformulated, and the design of its heat shield is not the same as that of the Apollo missions: while in the past, the Apollo heat shields had a honeycomblike structure made up of 36,000 small cells of AVCOAT, the Orion heat shield is made up of less than 200 large tiles of the material. Before Artemis II, an uncrewed Orion capsule flew in 2022 as part of the Artemis I mission, allowing a test of its heat shield without risking anyone’s well-being. During reentry, that heat shield cracked and shed more material than NASA engineers had expected. The space agency performed an urgent investigation into the anomaly and released a report detailing its findings in 2024. Ultimately, citing the expense and time any replacement would’ve taken, NASA decided not to change the heat shield design for Artemis II’s Orion capsule. Instead mission planners adjusted the capsule’s reentry trajectory so that its heat shield would be exposed to higher temperatures for a shorter time. Orion’s heat shield has been extensively tested on the ground, and NASA officials have said that their models show the new reentry profile effectively minimizes the reentry risk for the Artemis II crew." Nou, dat hopen we dan maar.