The two most dangerous moments in space flight are the launch and the reentry. The launch of Artemis II went smoothly, but on Friday, when the four-person crew reenters the earth’s atmosphere, significant danger lurks.
As it begins its reentry, the spacecraft Orion will enter what’s called the thermosphere, where they will travel through heat that can reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. “You’re in the middle of a fireball for about 15 minutes,” Charlie Camarda, a retired astronaut and senior engineer at NASA, told me.
He speaks from personal experience: He flew to space in 2005. That was two years after one of the worst disasters in NASA’s history, when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts on board.
