NASA's Orion Moon capsule to splash down this Sunday
NASA's crewless Orion capsule is all set to return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, December 11 after spending nearly a month orbiting the Moon., and will reach speeds of 25,000 miles per hour as it gets closer and closer. When the pod punches into the atmosphere, it will slow down to 300 miles per hour and heat up.
"Orion will come blazing through Earth's atmosphere at temperatures twice as hot as molten lava," Jeremy Vander Kam, deputy system manager working on the spacecraft's thermal protection system at NASA's Ames Research Center, said this week. NASA has covered the spacecraft in a material called Avcoat designed to protect and bring the capsule and future lunar astronauts back to Earth in one piece.
A second material, a 3D Multifunctional Ablative Thermal Protection known as 3DMAT, made out of woven threads of quartz in resin, coats connection points along the spacecraft to keep it together. Once Orion reaches an altitude of about 9,000 feet , its gigantic parachute will be deployed to slow it down even further to 20 miles per hour before it enters the sea.
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