The Orion spacecraft will have to do some fancy flying to return to Earth safely on Sunday after its Lunar journey
he crew of Apollo 8 had a lot of things on their minds when they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 27, 1968, after becoming the first humans to orbit the moon—and one of the biggest was the matter of the sharks. The spacecraft hit the water at 4:51 a.m. Hawaiian-Aleutian time, more than an hour before the Pacific sunrise.
Things are different today. When Artemis 1’s Orion spacecraft returns to Earth this Sunday, Dec. 11, after its 25-day lunar orbital mission, it will execute a never-before-tried means of reentry that will allow its guidance system to land it anywhere—and at any time—mission planners choose within an 8,890 km range. Want to land in daylight? Done. Want to land just 80 km off the coast of San Diego at precisely 12:40 p.m. Eastern Time, as is currently planned? Not a problem.
Artemis 1’s return will improve on things by attempting what flight engineers call a “skip entry.” When the Orion capsule enters the 24 km-wide keyhole in the atmosphere it will be traveling at a speed of more than 32,000 km/hr . The atmospheric friction from entering so fast will cause the temperature on its heat shield to rise throughout the descent process to a peak of 2,760º C .The uncrewed spacecraft will initially plunge to an altitude of 61,000 m —or about 61 km .
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