Questions tagged [reentry]
Questions related to the movement of human-made objects as they enter atmosphere of Earth or other planetary bodies with atmospheres from space after being successfully launched.
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Will there be a flame around the capsule from Stoke Space Technologies during reentery?
Stoke Space Technologies (https://www.stokespace.com/) will send fuel through the heat shield of its capsule to keep it from heating up. They actually mentioned that they are more concerned that the ...
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Design constrains for non-aerobraking re-entry vehicle?
Currently, getting from orbit to ground always involves aerobraking to shed lots of orbital velocity. This is a dangerous, stressful maneuver which also cannot be repeated with same vehicle due to the ...
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Does an inflatable heat shield have some capacity to be used for LEO Earth's atmospheric entry?
It was originally designed and tested by NASA for Mars missions.
In my case, it does not have to work 100%. Even if it survives for only 1 minute or so, during atmospheric entry - it could add some ...
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Do larger less dense objects heat less while entering the atmophere?
When a space craft enters the atmosphere, it gets hot and heat shielding is needed. Do objects with more surface area and less density heat up less then heavier, smaller objects? Could an object with ...
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What do they call “all the provisions provided during the launch campaign or atmospheric re-entry of a spacecraft“ in the context of astronautics?
I am reading an entry in a French dictionary and translating it into English. This entry is “sauvegarde.” In a general context, this term is translated as “safeguard,” “protection,” or even “...
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How much does it cost to return 1 kg from the ISS to the Earth? What are the parameters influencing this price?
I heard in a few places downmass is a limiting factor in the ISS national lab capacity. Is that true?
According to NASA's pricing plan, it actually costs more to get downmass than upmass. Why is that?
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During spacecraft reentry why is heatshield side down the most stable orientation?
During reentry, why is the orientation of the spacecraft where the heat shield side leads the vehicle the most stable?
I'm not sure how accurate KSP is, but when I reenter the atmosphere headshield ...
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What is the reason Starlink satellites took 4 days to re-enter during the accident on February 2022?
I am reviewing the incident that knocked out 39 Starlink satellites earlier this year.
As I explain in this thread, there was a modest magnetic storm on the 3rd of February, which increased ...
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Does a capsule rotate naturally during atmospheric re-entry?
If during atmospheric re-entry a capsule (with a shifted center of mass to produce lift) does not produce any rcs thrust, will the capsule naturally roll? and why?
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Has NASA used a consistent definition of "entry interface"?
The question "Orion re-entry velocity: Why is it higher than Apollo?" has an unstated but critical assumption: that re-entry is measured at the same point for both missions. The point ...
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Orion re-entry velocity: Why is it higher than Apollo?
Title says it all. I am puzzled why Orion will be traveling faster than Apollo.
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How to compute orbital decay of a cubesat?
I'd like to compute the orbital decay of a cubesat in LEO/VLEO due to atmospheric drag. Here is what I've done:
Based on the Satellite Orbital Decay Calculations document coming from the Australian ...
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Why don't we know exactly where the Chinese rocket will fall?
China has launched another Long March 5B rocket that seems liable to fall anywhere
Although the overall risk of harm to people is low—there is only a 0.5 percent chance of injury or death to a human, ...
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I'm building a CubeSat for a short 8-day mission in LEO followed by a fairly quick reentry, what range of orbits to consider?
The goal of this CubeSat mission is to demonstrate CubeSat construction, operation, and communication in Low Earth orbit for 8 days or longer.
Why the short mission time? Because the mission lacks ...
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Do we actually know what re-entry looks like?
So I was watching this video of a talk given by the creators of the game Kerbal Space Program. The video is more or less about game development, but this part (link should go right to the moment but ...
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How do we ensure that during reentry or descent of spent stages, it doesnt hit any aircraft or incoming rocket?
When a rocket is launched, stages are separated at different intervals and altitude. The lower stages usually descend immediately while upper stages and orbital platforms usually last in space a bit ...
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Commencing atmospheric re-entry
Once a decision is taken to get back home (earth), a spacecraft, I think has two options: 1 - To reduce its speed (by firing the thrusters located in the forward or something similar), so that it is ...
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How could space-manufactured goods be transported to earth surface?
In the near-to-mid future when ISRU and manufacturing in space is large enough to have an export industry back to Earth, there may be not only a significant volume of raw materials heading back to ...
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Does the debris from the re-entry of Long March core stage ever reach the surface?
It's common for SpaceX to de-orbit the second stage over the ocean (since they still have fuel for controlled re-entry,) but for the Long March core stage that is not the case.
Meteorites have hit the ...
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Could dust kicked up from the Apollo landings reach Earth intact?
According to various sources (1,2, and 3) lunar landings kick up a lot of dust at very high speeds. Is it possible that some dust was able to get fast enough to escape the moon, fall towards Earth, ...
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What does it mean when they say "switch to 32K " during the Phoenix Mars entry
In the Phoenix Mars entry video
they keep saying "Odyssey switching to 32k", "Stop of Odyssey unintelligible Data and switch to 32k",and "We ...
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Why does the Falcon 9 first stage continue to decelerate after its reentry engine burnout?
As you know, Space X streams its missions and the speed and altitude data of the vehicle is shown. After stage separation, stage one gains speed and accelerates in its decent trajectory till reentry ...
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How to design Heading Alignment Cone(HAC)?
I am trying to design a Heading Alignment Cone. Of course, the radius of the circle depends on different parameters like energy, altitude, and aerothermal characteristics of the reentry vehicle and ...
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How do I convert from one local NED frame to another?
A little bit of background in case you are interested. I am running a re-entry simulation, and I am dealing with two different reference frames. The one with the higher fidelity dynamics is in the ...
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How spontaneously can a spacecraft be deorbited [duplicate]
Currently the return of AX-1 has been rescheduled multiple days due to weather concerns in the landing area. How quickly could astronauts on the ISS evacuate to the ground if so required?
Scenarios ...
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Mystery balls! Gemini apparently had "thousands of hollow ping-pong-sized balls made of extremely thin aluminum embedded within its walls". What?
This fascinating answer says that "The Gemini capsule floated because it had thousands of hollow balls made of extremely thin aluminum, each composed of two half-spheres welded together, the size ...
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How might an "imminent Starlink reentry in your area" alerting script work?
The video below Space debris over Puerto Rico (2/7/2022) SAC seems likely to show one or more reentering Starlink satellites from the 40 "Starlost" lost to atmospheric heating due to a ...
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Did any Columbia debris continue orbiting Earth?
For reentry the Space Shuttles lowered their perigee to 28 nautical miles (52 km) above sea level. Shuttle Columbia disintegrated around 60 km altitude, and the first debris fell off as high as 70.5 ...
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Would it be feasible to decelerate a crewed vehicle from ~25 km/s only using the atmosphere of Mars (in the context of an "express transit")?
I boldly assumed it would some day be possible to accelerate a crewed vehicle from a refueling station (LEO, GEO, Moon orbit?) to ~35-40 km/s (with several stages) relative to Mars, so it would make ...
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Heatshield during re-entry of space vehicles
All the CMs for Apollo, as well as the space shuttles, basically used "Blunt body" technique for re-entry. While Apollo CMs used "ablative" type of heatshield, the space shuttles ...
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Could sheets of stacked graphene be used as part of a heat shield, since its melting point is 3000k to 5000 K
Since graphene material is the strongest manmade material, with "magical" properties, I wonder if it could be considered for use as a heat shield, since its melting point is 3000 to 5000 K ...
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Can an ISS module survive reentry?
Nasa is making plans to de-orbit the ISS safely over the pacific ocean, this eventually leads to the question of whether or not an ISS module can survive reentry (survive meaning it is recognizable ...
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Has SpaceX chosen to drop the Transpiration cooling of Starship? If so, why?
Earlier, there was news about a proposed concept for Starship to include "transpirational cooling" in its reentry heat shield design.
These days there is less news about this and tests so ...
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Do reentering capsules always make a(n Earth-shattering ka-)boom and look like a fireball if at night? Time & epicenter predictable w/ public info?
SpaceX enjoys press.
So the unexpected events popping up in the news is good for them.
March 26, 2021:
Fire ball burning over Woodland WA- SpaceX second stage re-entry and burn up.
A ‘spectacular’ ...
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Dragon re-entry flight profile?
I was looking online for a profile depicting the Dragon re-entry similar to those showing the launch and first stage re-entry (e.g. https://www.elonx.net/wp-content/uploads/...
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What is the heat shield refurbishment procedure for a crew Dragon capsule?
How, specifically, is the heat shield replaced or refurbished? More precisely... How do they know it will work for the next mission? :-P
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Soyuz: Do you know the coefficient drag and lift to drag ratio are during reentry?
I've been learning Python as a hobby the last two years. I like spaceflight too. Therefore I wrote this code to simulate the reentry of a Soyuz. I'd appreciate some feedback: https://github.com/fra-...
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How does a returning Falcon first stage decide when to end its re-entry burn?
When a Falcon 9 first stage is returning to Earth to land, it performs a brief re-entry burn in order to slow down.
My question is, what criteria does the first stage control software use to decide ...
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Space Shuttle Challenger bringing back Salyut-7
We know that on February 11 1985, right after the Soviets lost control of their Salyut-7 station. US Space tracking assets also started noticing that the station was starting to tumble.
Kidnapping a ...
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Has there been any bolide-spacecraft near-miss?
Has there been any incident where a reentering spacecraft nearly collided with a meteor?
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Do aeroshells need to be super smooth to survive atmospheric entry?
IIRC, one of the arguments against Shuttle Columbia's hole being repaired was that the repair would not be smooth. Apparently, the heat shielding relied on a sensitive boundary layer. Even a small ...
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Would it have made a difference to the TPS design if the Shuttle used skip reentries?
The Space Shuttle needed silica tiles and carbon-carbon panels to survive the sustained high temperatures of reentry. These materials were fragile and high-maintenance, and this led to the Columbia ...
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What if the Starship fins were fixed?
The body flaps on Starship have the responsibilty of controlling attitude during atmospheric flight. They are also needed to deal with the large moments created by carrying payloads in the nose.
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How can SpaceX receive data from Starship during re-entry communications blackout
Surviving re-entry will be one of the initial critical aspects of the Starship development program.
If there are locations on the vessel where the heat-shield fails, leading to its destruction how ...
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Gagarin not ejecting from capsule
I'm currently reading a dutch book about the earlier days of manned spaceflight (Ruimtevaart B. van der Klaauw). Published in 1962
In a chapter about Vostok 1 the book reads as following
Translated ...
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Into what non-navigable Pacific Ocean area did structural elements of the Progress MS16 cargo ship & Pirs module fall? Are there maps of these areas?
This recent Roscosmos tweet (found in CNET's See astronaut's wild view of a discarded ISS module burning up) says:
The non-combustible structural elements of the #ProgressMS16 cargo ship and the #...
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Can Mars orbiters be disposed in the atmosphere, as it is done on Earth?
There are a fair number of spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, and each will eventually reach the end of its useful life. Satellites in low Earth orbit are routinely de-orbited at the end of their ...
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Could a steel drum perform reentry with a heat shield?
Suppose you have a regular steel drum with an ablative heat shield on the bottom. Theoretically, could this steel drum with heat shield perform a reentry from low earth orbit?
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Measurement and estimation of temperature of Space Shuttle nose cone during launch and re-entry
During the launch and re-entry of the Space Shuttle, what are the measured and estimated temperatures (or distribution) of the shuttle nose cone as a function of altitude? How is the temperature ...
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What orbits are Starlink satellites now deployed into? How low to do they go on their first perigee?
In my answer to Delta-V of Starlink Satellites I ballpark spherical-cow envelope-back estimated 190 m/s with 2 kg of krypton based on raising only from a 445 km circular orbit to a 550 km circular ...
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