Two companies with Bay State ties had key roles in NASA's new Orion spacecraft's historic 3,600-mile journey yesterday, developing the state-of the-art heat shield that protected it and the software that guided it to a safe landing.
"One of the key points of this test flight was to make sure that the heat shield could tolerate this more stressful re-entry," MIT aerospace engineering Professor Jeffrey Hoffman said. "It seems to have worked quite well, which is great news."
The heat shield's coating, which protected the crew module as the spacecraft endured temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere at more than 20,000 mph from a high altitude orbit, was applied by workers at Textron Defense Systems in Wilmington.
Technicians and engineers there spent months applying Avcoat, a material that wears away as it heats up during re-entry, to the largest heat shield of its kind ever built.
And Cambridge-based Draper Laboratory developed guidance and navigation algorithms for Orion, which ensured it made a "bulls-eye" splashdown at its intended site in the Pacific.
NASA is counting on future Orions to carry astronauts beyond Earth's orbit in the decades ahead, to asteroids and ultimately the grand prize: Mars.
"The first use of Orion for a human mission that NASA is talking about is actually to go into orbit around the moon to visit this asteroid they want to bring back," said Hoffman. "NASA is developing the technologies that will be necessary ultimately for deep space exploration and so I think it is fair to say that this is a first step toward Mars."
Officials expect it will be at least seven years from now — 2021 — before Orion carries people.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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