NASA Will Test a High Stakes Re-Entry Maneuver With Artemis 1 on Sunday

The 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. A recovery crew of Navy frogmen was standing by on the nearby USS Yorktown, but they dared not jump into the water until day broke—and the astronauts dared not exit their spacecraft—because sharks prowl in the predawn darkness. Only when the sun came up would it be safe to attempt a recovery.
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Landing in a daylit part of the world would have clearly been preferable, but back in the Apollo era, returning lunar astronauts could not be so choosy. Once they hit the atmosphere they were essentially in free-fall, flying at a steep angle and eventually splashing down 2,776 km (1,725 mi.) from their point of atmospheric entry. If that happened to be in dark, shark-infested waters, well, that was the price you paid for going to the moon.
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 (5,524 mi) range. Want to land in day...

Source: TIME: Science - December 8, 2022 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized Explainer healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news