- NASA’s supremely successful inaugural test flight of the Orion deep space capsule on the EFT-1 mission in Dec. 2014, NASA is beefing up the critical thermal protection system (TPS) that will protect astronauts from the searing heats experienced during reentry as the human rated vehicle plunges through the Earth’s atmosphere after returning from ambitious expeditions to the Moon and beyond.
- Based in part on lessons learned from EFT-1, engineers are refining Orion’s heat shield to enhance the design, ease manufacturing procedures and significantly strengthen is heat resistant capabilities for the far more challenging space environments and missions that lie ahead later this decade and planned further out in the future as part of NASA’s agency-wide ‘Journey to Mars’ initiative to send humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s.
- On all future flights starting with Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), the Orion crew module must withstand the higher temperatures and speeds experienced during return from more distant destinations such as the Moon, near-Earth Asteroids and Mars.
Keywords-Orion deep space capsule on the EFT-1 mission,Critical thermal protection system ,Orion’s heat shield ,Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1).
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