He heat shield of the spaceship Oriondestined to one day take astronauts to the Moon within the framework of the program Artemis of the POTsuffered unexpected damage in more than 100 places when the spacecraft returned to Earth during an uncrewed test flight in 2022, according to a surveillance report published late on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
Although the capsule withstood the fiery tumult of reentrywhen temperatures reached 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it hurtled through the atmosphere at nearly 25,000 miles per hour, the damage to the heat shield was far greater than NASA engineers had realized. POT expected and more serious than the POT had previously revealed. Photos of the heat shield in the report show dents that look like small potholes.
“If the same problem were to occur in future missions Artemiscould cause the loss of the vehicle or the crew,” concluded the report, prepared by the inspector general of the POT.
At the beginning of this year, the POT announced that the next flight of its lunar program Artemiswhich would send a crew of four around the Moon on the mission Artemis IIwould be delayed until September 2025, largely because officials wanted to further study the issue of heat shield and understand Why did it erode like it did?.
The report of IG provides the most detailed description of the problem to date. They also point out other problems with the spacecraft that could pose significant challenges to the space agency as it attempts to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.
According to the report, parts of the heat shield “worn differently than the company engineers anticipated.” POT, cracking and detaching from the ship in fragments that created a wake of debris instead of melting as planned. That, in turn, “could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of the parachutes to fail.” Orion”.
At the time, the flight Artemis I was hailed as a huge success that would put the space agency on the path to returning humans to the Moon. The administrator of the POT, Bill Nelsonrecently testified before a congressional committee that the space agency continues to believe a human landing on the planet is possible. Moon at the end of 2026.
But the report of IG calls into question both the optimistic original assessment of the POT on the test flight and the probability of a moon landing occurring within that period. In addition to the erosion of Orion heat shieldmade by Lockheed Martinhe IG He said several crew module bolts “experienced an exposed gap that allowed for greater heating of the bolt interior and greater melting and erosion than expected.”
The plans of the officials of the POT to recover the capsule’s hardware, including its three parachutes, were also thwarted, the report said. “The recovery team was unable to reach the landing site before the ejecta sank into the Pacific Ocean”says the report. “Although pre-flight analysis indicated a sufficient chance of buoyancy for recovery forces to arrive in time, the hardware sank faster than anticipated.”
The report also said that the powerful rocket Space Launch Systemwhich hoisted Orion, caused significant damage to ground equipment, including blowing off elevator doors in the mobile launch tower. He IG said that the POT It took six weeks to get one elevator back into operation and about four months to repair a second.
The launch tower required “major repairs that will cost more than $26 million, approximately 5 times more than the $5 million” that the POT had reserved for such jobs, according to the report.
Catherine Koernerassociate administrator of the POT for the direction of the exploration systems development mission, said that the report of IG supports the purpose of the flight Artemis Iwhich was to test how it behaved Orion in space with no one on board. In a statement, she stated that the POT was already addressing the issues raised in the report before its publication.
“The POT I hoped to discover and solve problems before Artemis II“, wrote. “This process of finding and addressing engineering challenges is a natural part of the design-test-repair process.” To the POT is concerned that the tone of the report may suggest that the Inspector General identified the risks discussed, when in fact, all recommendations were already being addressed by the POT through forward risk-based provision prior to audit.”
He added that “the POT continues to make significant progress in assessing the root cause of coal loss from the heat shield.”
The POT has formed a team to investigate the erosion pattern in the heat shield and why it behaved differently than expected by its engineers. At the moment, no conclusion has been reached, since “ground tests cannot reproduce the exact temperature and speed conditions faced by the aircraft.” heat shield during reentry.”
“Engineers are simultaneously investigating ways to mitigate carbon loss by modifying the design of the heat shield or altering the reentry trajectory of Orion”says the report. The Orion It performs what is called a skip entry, where it dives into the atmosphere to slow down, skips out, and reenters again.
The heat shields are a component life of spaceshipsdesigned to protect the crew during one of the most dangerous parts of space flight: when the capsule, returning from space, crashes into the increasingly dense atmosphere that surrounds the Earth, generating enormous temperatures.
In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, killing all seven crew, after a piece of foam collided with the leading edge of the wing and caused a breach in the thermal protection system.
In January, announcing the delays of Artemis, James Freeassociate administrator of the POTstated that the agency would not rush into launching Artemis IIwhich would send the astronauts of the NASA Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Gloveras well as the Canadian Jeremy Hansenon a 10-day trip around the Moon.
“As we prepare to send our friends and colleagues on this mission, we are committed to launching as safely as possible,” he stated. Free. “And we will launch when we are ready.”
(c) 2024, The Washington Post
