NASA has developed a new metallic based, silver colored, thermal control coating for its Orion spacecraft , the intention of which is to protect the complex machine from extreme heat both while in orbit and its fiery return to earth. The thermal coating is one of the most integral parts of any spacecraft which leaves the earth’s orbit to explore surrounding celestial bodies like the moon or other planets. This particular development is critical to the spacecraft – Orion as it facilitates human exploration of asteroids and planet Mars. Several new discoveries about asteroids and Mars could be made if Orion is successful in bringing back information safely with this new thermal coating.
The new system, as divulged by NASA consists of the spacecrafts main heat shield that faces the atmosphere while re-entering the earth, which helps in slowing down the spacecraft to be able to make a steady landing. It also consists of a grid of tiles known as the black shell, the function of which was not elaborated upon. The reason behind this new addition to the Orion spacecraft is that during its next mission, named as EM – 1, it is expected to be in space for more than three weeks and return to earth under even hotter and faster conditions than its last mission.
John Kowal, NASA’s thermal protection system lead said As we move towards building the system for EM-1, we’ve been able to take advantage of what we learned from building and flying Orion to refine our processes going forward. Kowal is responsible for the design and effective working of Orion’s thermal protection system.
During the exploration flight test one, Orion reentered the earth at speeds of 30,000 feet per second while it is expected that it will reenter the earth during its mission at a speed of 36,000 feet per second. As the temperature difference caused even at such subtle speed difference is exponential, it was a cause of concern for the team which led them to develop the new shield for the spacecraft.
