As we’ve covered, all eyes are on the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield, which chaotically broke down and cracked last time it was tested in 2022.
The damage was caused by gas getting trapped in the shield when it re-entered the atmosphere, which then violently expanded and blew more than 100 chunks off the shield.
“They did a tremendous amount of research, a lot of groundbreaking research in some facilities that we had not used before, and they discovered the root cause,” Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman said before launch.
“They did wind tunnel testing and laser testing and hyper-velocity testing, and they determined that if we come in with this lofted profile … that this heat shield will be safe for us to go fly.
“So I think all that points in the direction of goodness … and I think if you, as a human being who was about to board this rocket, had sat in the meetings that we sat in and listened to the experts and gone through the data with them, you would have the same comfort.”
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