Stefan Bohacek3d ago

"The Orion capsule carrying the Artemis II astronauts will be travelling at more than 11 km/s (40,000 km/h) when it reaches Earth’s atmosphere. This is 40 times faster than a passenger jet travels."

Wishing the Artemis II crew a safe return home!

https://theconversation.com/artemis-ii-crew-will-endure-3-000-c-on-re-entry-a-hypersonics-expert-explains-how-they-will-survive-280042

#news #science #space #ArtemisII

Artemis II crew will endure 3,000°C on re-entry. A hypersonics expert explains how they will survive

The high-speed, hypersonic and extremely hot re-entry is the last challenge the Artemis II crew will have to endure on their epic 10-day mission.

The Conversation
Show threadR.L. Dane    🍵 3d ago

@stefan

Reentry from the moon is no joke.

Compare that 11 km/s reentry speed to something more like 8 km/s coming from low earth orbit.

They hit the atmosphere pretty hard. One [video] I saw of someone using Kerbal Space Program to simulate a reentry from the moon (using a mod to substitute in the real solar system instead of KSP's miniature 1/10th scale planets and solar system) had them using multiple stacked heat sinks to survive reentry, because the stock heat sinks (designed with the game's 1/10th scale solar system in mind) just weren't enough.

Thankfully, NASA doesn't need to stack heat sinks. They've got the right numbers. 😄

Show threadStefan Bohacek
@rl_dane Yeah, pretty incredible!
Apr 9 at 5:06pmWeb