CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – It will be one of the most dangerous parts of Artemis II, and not everyone thinks NASA should trust the astronauts’ lives to a heat shield that was damaged the last time it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
During that fiery re-entry four years ago, NASA said gas was unexpectedly trapped in the bottom part of the Orion spacecraft.
While the inside of the capsule, where just a mannequin was strapped in, was okay, NASA looked into how the heat shield cracked under pressure for a year.
“They went in and investigated that in enormous detail,” CBS news space analyst Bill Harwood said.
Harwood talked to your Cape Canaveral Community Correspondent James Sparvero about NASA’s decision to change the path of re-entry for the astronauts’ mission.
Last year, Sparvero asked questions, as well, to Lockheed Martin about a safer trajectory with lives onboard.
Vice President Kirk Shireman’s company built Orion and its heat shield.
“So, the heat wasn’t the issue,” Sparvero asked.
Artemis I was the hottest any spacecraft has ever returned during re-entry.
“No, it had to do with the trajectory and the fact that it could create these little gas bubbles underneath that layer,” Shireman said. “For Artemis II, we’re not going as far down range so we’re just gonna come in and keep coming all the way down.”
Harwood said NASA is 100 percent confident the plan will work.
“Critics have claimed they don’t fully understand the problem, they don’t know if there would be unintended consequences with this new trajectory, and that they should wait until they understand it better or put a new heat shield on,” Harwood said.
NASA is planning to upgrade the heat shield for the lunar landing mission with astronauts.
If Artemis II can pave the way, NASA hopes to launch a crew to the lunar surface in just another two years.