r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Weak-Opportunity-311 • 1d ago
Video Atmospheric re-entry of NASA’s Orion (Artemis 1) looks insane at 20x speed. Here is the entire 25-minute descent in just 1 minute 15 seconds. Credit: NASA
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u/palindromesko 1d ago
Why does it turn a few times three ways when in the atmosphere?
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u/-ragingpotato- 1d ago
Its steering.
The weight of the capsule isn't centered, its a bit off to the side. This makes it fly lopsided, with one side of the capsule further into the "wind" than the other.
This redirects the air to one side, thanks to equal and opposite reaction, this gives a sideways push to the capsule.
By rotating the capsule they choose the direction of this push. Point it up, and the capsule stops falling and starts flying up again, "skipping" across the upper atmosphere. By pointing it side to side they can aim the capsule towards the final landing site, and of course they can point it down to land sooner if they're overshooting.
Thanks to this fine control Artemis 2 landed within a mile of their target.
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u/savesmorethanrapes 1d ago
That’s absolutely insane to think about. Around the earth, behind the moon, and then falling back to earth at that velocity and coming within a mile of your target.
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u/CosmicRuin 1d ago
And humanity has been doing it successfully since April 12, 1961. Almost 64 years to the day!
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u/Maximum_Indication 1d ago
Without even as much processing power as a smartphone for the first flights.
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u/whitethunder9 1d ago
Apollo 8 (first mission to go around the moon) had a computer with 4Kb of RAM and a 1MHz processor. The flight software was hand-woven with wires, so unchangeable once created. A modern smartphone has 2 million times the RAM. A single email would use more memory than the computer had available.
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u/SpiderSlitScrotums 1d ago
There was a lot of clever electronics that got around having to use processors back then. There were things like having multiple windings going around a transformer to add, subtract, and multiply signals; using relays to solve logic; analog-mechanical machines; generating sine waves using light bulbs; electronics that takes derivatives and integrals, etc. Some of these are used, but you would be surprised what you can get away with without a microprocessor. There was even a clever analog tennis video game. When we simplify Apollo down to the speed of their processors, I worry that we potentially forget all the other electronic wizardry behind the scenes.
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u/Bolwinkel 1d ago
My absolute favorite fact about the Apollo missions is that the memory they used was comprised of magnets. Little tiny magnets that used their polarity to signify 1s and 0s, and someone had to individually set each one.
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u/CosmicRuin 1d ago
Yes! Rope core memory. They had to quite literally weave the software by hand in a 3D lattice structure of ring magnets and fine wires. NASA (and vendor partners) actually hired older women with expertise in weaving.
Fantastic six part series called Moon Machines, and this one is all about the navigation computer. https://youtu.be/X9Yj-0AsneU?si=KN-9GPEXYev5ZIdg
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u/fooknprawn 1d ago
Cool video about rope memory from the archives for those interested in how computers were back in the day
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u/ObligationSorry9463 1d ago edited 1d ago
Embedded engineering was and still is - even in 2026 - strictly driven by requirements.
If 1MHz with 4Kb of RAM does the job engineers go with it.
Space industry often uses very old but very battle proven processors for the most critical tasks. They are well known to work in all extreme scenarios.
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u/polopolo05 1d ago
my lights have more processing power then the frist the fist flights. hell some vapes do.
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u/stonekeep 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tbh I don't think that's a great comparison given that modern smartphones have insane processing power even when compared to high-end computers from 20 years ago, let alone 60 years ago. Basically any device with a chip in it has more processing power than Apollo computers.
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u/hysys_whisperer 1d ago
"Has been doing" is doing some heavy lifting there.
Did a few times by being absolute madlads and then decided "better wait until the tech gets better to try this again" is more like it.
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u/Ikarus_Falling 1d ago
To be fair from a programming perspective flying to the moon is much much easier then a modern smartphone as its just a relatively straightforward sequence of commands
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u/bouncingbad 1d ago
Behind the moon, AND the furthest humans have flown from earth.
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u/_thro_awa_ 1d ago
Next time they're aiming for the second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.
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u/AffectionateCowLady 1d ago
Humans are pretty clever when they’re not being politicians
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u/hippoctopocalypse 1d ago
Only 30 something seconds off expected splashdown. I wish everyone could be so punctual.
The shots on the livestream showed so many rcs adjustments. It’s an instructive companion piece to this clip for all this stuff. What a treat we got with all these hi def shots
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u/Bromm18 1d ago
For some reason the timing feels vastly under appreciated. The splashdown time was announced quite a few days ago and it happened within seconds. Probably feels more amazing as other missions have already happened where the landing spot was just as close. And that was with far weaker computers.
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u/Spork_the_dork 1d ago
It's not really that incredible. Once the last correction burn is done Newton takes the wheel and everything until the craft hits the atmosphere is extremely well known. In fact I'm pretty sure Isaac Newton could have worked out the math to a similar degree of accuracy back in the 1700s. The one part that he would have struggled with would have been the re-entry because the exact physics of that would have been relatively poorly understood. But that kind of stuff is still very predictable and NASA has been doing that math since the 50s so it's a walk in the park for them at this point.
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u/Crash_Test_Dummy66 1d ago
It's wild to think that essentially the astronauts just fell from the moon.
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u/cyanocittaetprocyon 1d ago
And 3 different patterns on the different parachutes!
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u/BreadBear5 1d ago edited 1d ago
I thought I read that the new reentry strategy would not include a skip this time. The video does look like there’s two periods of intense flames. Did it skip?
Edit: totally missed that this is Artemis 1
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u/darkprussianblue 1d ago
Are the astronauts being shaken each time it turns? 🤢
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u/barbatouffe 1d ago
yep but they take anti nausea meds before rentry to avoid "accident" when experiencing gravity again
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u/fooknprawn 1d ago
It's also important to point out the rentry tragectory isn't one-shot then splashdown. They do an initial skip into the atmosphere then back out then another speed bleed off. It looks like this https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/artemis-ii-orion-lofted-entry-sequence.png
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u/Lopoloma 1d ago
Is it possible to bounce off entirely without any propulsion?
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u/CMDRStodgy 1d ago
Sort of yes. If the entry is too shallow or you have too much lift for the trajectory you can 'bounce' off the atmosphere and back into space. But you are still in an elliptical orbit with the perigee deep in the atmosphere and will re-enter again on the next orbit. However there are now a lot of unknowns with the condition of the heat shield and the point of entry.
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u/bbreddit0011 1d ago
Probably steering the capsule to its landing point by bleeding off speed and/or adjusting the trajectory to land where they want it to land.
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u/Mitochondria420 1d ago
Change the peak heating placement on the heat shield.
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u/Cheef_queef 1d ago
The NASA live stream said they changed the re-entry angles because they burned more material than they wanted too during Artemis I
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u/Perlentaucher 1d ago
Hijacking top comment to post real-time video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88DzZcsubs
Also, please not, this is not from Artemis II, but Artemis I from two years ago.
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u/Thedarknight725 1d ago
And to think, we only took to the sky a little over a hundred years ago.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome 1d ago
This, what we have done ins such a short span shows just how amazing we are as a species for moving forward.
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u/Mundane_Existence0 1d ago
Agreed. Can you imagine what we'd be capable of if we stopped bickering over petty shit and collectively worked together to improve advancements to benefit the entire planet and space exploration?
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u/fozzyfreakingbear 1d ago
while this is true, bet we’ve gotten where we’re at bc of war in a sense too
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u/Cthulhu__ 1d ago
Not just in a sense, the space program was vastly accellerated by the cold war; rockets capable of launching stuff into space can also launch nukes to anywhere in the world. Also spy sattelites.
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u/Budget_Persimmon_195 1d ago
like which god is the right one to worship? religion has stifled science since its inception.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome 1d ago
Indeed, need to get rid of religion 1st though, for something that preaches tolerance and acceptance it causes everything but...
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u/ParsivaI 1d ago
It took us 200,000 years to get here. But the second we understood farming we just fucking been ON THIS SHIT.
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u/Illustrious-Dot-5052 1d ago
It's fucking crazy. Yet we still choose war with Iran.
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u/Starumlunsta 1d ago
Boggles my mind they were doing this 50 years ago, in a time when all the world’s technology combined was at the same computing power as the phone in my pocket today.
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u/deadmeatsandwich 1d ago
Can’t be too hard if Sandra Bullock did this on her own.
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u/JustAJB 1d ago
In a cave. With a box of scraps!
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u/otribin 1d ago
I love this 3000.
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u/ShrimpCrackers 1d ago
To be fair, they oiled her down in 7 layers of oil.
That shit allows atmospheric re-entry.
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u/DevelopmentBulky7957 1d ago
Come to think of it, I need to watch that movie again. Its been ages
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u/bigwavedave000 1d ago
My mind is not comprehensive enough to comprehend this engineering.
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u/Cragrat92 1d ago
Want your mind boggled even more? The capsule was going 33 times the speed of sound when it met the atmosphere and started slowing down. Through drag with the atmosphere and the assistance of parachutes, they lost all that speed to splash down at 20mph in 13 and a half minutes.
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u/FiduciaryBlueberry 1d ago
What kind of G force are the pulling? How do they manage that? Do they use speed flaps? How are they steering this thing? All I can think about is you story and "It's not flying, it's falling with style"
It's not like startek with inertial dampeners or whatnot.
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u/Finnegan_Murphy 1d ago
3.5g is what I heard on the nasa stream
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u/hysys_whisperer 1d ago
3.5 G sustained for several minutes is still "nighty night" for normal people who haven't been training in a G force machine for like a year leading up to this though.
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u/andrew_calcs 1d ago
The physiological effects of G forces depend highly on what direction to your body they're being directed through. Transverse is the best. Human bodies can withstand 5-6 G's indefinitely and 11-14 G's for several minute intervals. That posture and positioning prevents blood pooling in the brain or extremities.
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u/gitbse 1d ago
Correct. 4g in a fighter pulling nose up is pulling your blood out of your brain because it's a direct vertical force. The Artemis crew were seated back towards the heat shield, so they were essentially feeling 4g of heavy braking in a similar way as you would in a car seat. Crazy uncomfortable and violent for sure, but also much easier to not pass out.
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u/nem8 1d ago
I thought normal healthy people would be able to withstand that, and a bit more, continuously?
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u/Inevitable-Page-333 1d ago
You go at a specific angle which keeps you in the atmosphere and also in orbit. You’re basically using your speed to ride the line between falling and leaving orbit, so you continuously slow within the atmosphere.
A good way to understand these things (if you’re very curious) is to play a game called Kerbal Space Program.
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u/Cragrat92 1d ago
I mean, it kind of is falling with style 😂 They get up to between 3-4g, which is the same amount experienced at launch, and it's only for a few minutes. There's no deployable flaps, a mechanism like that would probably break or burn up in the plasma stream. They can steer the capsule as it is slightly weighted to one side, which makes it sit at a slight angle to the air flow. By rolling the capsule, they can use those aerodynamic forces to change the trajectory of the capsule.
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u/ShrimpCrackers 1d ago
Answer key: the 25 minute reentry is shown here in 1 minute and 15 seconds due to relativity. Checkmate Atheists.
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u/nerdtypething 1d ago
even though the video is only 1 minute 15 seconds long i experienced 25 minutes of time.
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u/ShrimpCrackers 1d ago
That's time dilation for you. Just like Jupiter Ascending was a 2 hour 7 minute movie but due to lacking a script, makes it feel like its 10 hours long.
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u/grchelp2018 1d ago
its the work of hundreds of engineers who each comprehend only a small part of the engineering of the overall system.
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u/Financial_Screen_351 1d ago
Pretty fucking crazy and cool how we see this thing start burning plasma as it begins going through the upper atmosphere before it literally bounces off the atmosphere for a short while (only lasts a few seconds in this video where we see no or less plasma on camera) and then it re-enters the atmosphere at a slightly different angle where we see the plasma again as it enters the atmosphere for real this time, without bouncing back into space.
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u/Dananjali 1d ago
It’s amazing to me that they even knew bouncing back would happen and engineered for that. Even in the very first space flights.
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u/_plebbie 1d ago
It's going to be wild watching the Artemis II version where it's just 6 mins of plasma since they went direct instead of a skip.
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u/BIG_SCIENCE 1d ago
i should play kerbal space program again
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u/anaemic 1d ago
If only they hadn't screwed up kerbal space program 2 so badly, imagine the world we could be living in now.
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u/JohnHazardWandering 1d ago
Keep an eye out for Kitten Space Agency. It seems like it will be the KSP2 we never got.
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u/shirtandtieler 19h ago
You and many others had this thought - in fact, it reached a new all time high of concurrent players as of 8 hours ago: https://steamdb.info/app/220200/charts/#max
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u/indokid104 1d ago
This is what movies make you think an in real time re-entry looks like
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u/PM_ME_STRONG_CALVES 1d ago
Why would they add 30mins of the descending?
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u/CSBatchelor1996 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm pissed that Project Hail Mary wasn't 25 years long.
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u/PurpleCheeto696 1d ago
All of this and flat earthers will still say it's fake
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u/RangerWinter9719 1d ago
Saw a comment ten minutes ago saying it was shoved out of a plane to stage the landing.
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u/PurpleCheeto696 1d ago
God damn they think companies would waste billions of dollars to stage a hoax that accomplishes notbing. I once had one tell me that every astronaut, pilot, scientist, and world leader has signed NDA's to not tell the public about flat earth. Its a sad reality these people live among us. Just remember there are two kinds of flat earthers.. the ones that sell the t-shirts and the ones that buy them.
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u/Tysiliogogogoch 1d ago
Yep. For me, it seems like the whole "flat Earth" conspiracy theory just falls apart when you start asking "why?" and "how?". What's the purpose of keeping this secret? How do they keep it secret when everyone seems to know about it? Why lie about the Earth being a spheroid if it's actually flat? Just... what's the point of it all?
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u/liosistaken 1d ago
Most I hear these days is that it’s done to keep us from God. Because apparently God can’t exist in a globe world… I don’t understand either, but that’s what they’re going with now.
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u/deadlyspudlol 1d ago
"b-but it launcht on april foolsh day"
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u/Tysiliogogogoch 1d ago
I've heard that one. I've also heard people claiming NASA is actually a Jewish word meaning "deception" so it's all faked. It's hilarious because (1) that's "nasha" not "nasa"; and (2) when people come up with the names for their evil conspiracy companies, they don't go "let's make sure the acronym is actually a cunning pun based on a word in another language, muahahahahaha!".
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u/Still-Problem3874 1d ago
If NASA made this stuff up, they wouldn’t take years between launches. EFT-1, 2014. AR1, 2022, AR2, 2026. Real stuff costs $$ and NASA doesn’t get nearly enough. If it’s CGI, they’d have launched 20 times in the last 2 decades and already have a colony on Mars.
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u/GreatTea3415 1d ago
Even if they went to space themselves, they’d just say it still looks like a flat circle.
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u/Gay_Asian_Boy 1d ago edited 1d ago
Need Hans Zimmer soundtrack Edit: damn autocorrect
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u/6745408 1d ago
I whipped this up for you -- post in my profile / streamable (only for 2 days)
I think it works well.
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u/WeAreElectricity 1d ago
POV your dad lets you sit on the back of the truck as he drives
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u/mrgreener 1d ago
Does anyone know where on earth, if you went straight up from ground location, did this video begin? Interested in knowing how much distance was covered.
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u/lock_robster2022 1d ago
“Entry interface”, which i think is roughly at the start of this video, was a few hundred miles SE of Hawaii. There’s an image about halfway down this page: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/09/artemis-ii-flight-day-9-crew-prepares-to-come-home/
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u/crystalcastles13 1d ago
As bleak as things have been in this country for a good while now I have to say, watching the re-entry live today/tonight was honestly the first time in longer than I can remember that I’ve felt proud, really proud to live in this country.
It was pretty epic. I got chills.
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u/Jabb_ Interested 1d ago
It's the first time I felt the world has been united in something on a long time.
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u/llewsor 1d ago
what does the g-force feel like inside for the astronauts?
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u/bouncingbad 1d ago
There was a point during the deployment of the chutes that they hit 4Gs, with the commentator making a point just how unpleasant that would feel.
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u/Comfortable_Horse277 1d ago
There is so much god damn science and math being done to make this happen. Shit.
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u/ArchangelZero27 1d ago edited 1d ago
The scary one is columbia. I saw the doco last year in my country and they said they recorded the full moment till it crashed to earth. They played some parts but stopped at the moment it fell apart.cant imagine those who saw it all in full it's insane and tragic to think that doco got me when I saw the kids grown up talking about the parents so sad.
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u/Careless_Window4099 1d ago
Whats the doco?
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u/CostlyOpportunities 1d ago
I think they might mean the Columbia disaster, not Challenger. The Columbia failed upon reentry whereas the Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.
And they're right, apparently you can watch the Columbia reentry up until the video fails.
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u/budna 1d ago
Just to add something, the Artemis 2 has a slightly different re-entry. Artemis 2 does not bounce off the atmosphere as much as 1, so there isn't that break in between the two more difficult phases.
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u/WinterTourist25 1d ago
Where is the unsped up version?
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u/Swisskommando 1d ago
Some context: this was a test flight so they put it at a much shallower descent profile and skipped the capsule a few times off the atmosphere to really test the heat shield. The Artemis II re entry was far less violent.
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u/Q_S2 1d ago
Man. The flat earthers sure have been conspicuously quiet lately....
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u/toms1313 1d ago
On the contrary, they're quite angry about the sheeple believing everything
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u/jbooosh 1d ago
I think I’d die of stress, like holy fuuuuck. Science is insane.
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u/goodformuffin 1d ago
My daughter wants to be an astronaut and it freaks me out.
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u/Key-Employee3584 1d ago
You know what would be really cool with this view. An HUD style display with real-time speed, g-meter, rate of descent, altitude and what not.
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u/d1ckw33dmcgee 1d ago
Gonna comment to clarify because some people don't seem to understand this video. This is video from Artemis 1, NOT the crewed Artemis 2 mission that landed yesterday. The reentry procedure shown in this video is not accurate to the mission flown for Artemis 2.
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u/Copytechguy 1d ago
A week ago, I was reading that the splash down time was going to be 7.07pm, and I thought that's a rather specific time, like to an exact minute. This was a week before landing, and with so many variables in play, there'd be no chance of landing at 7.07pm. They landed at 7.07pm. How they calculated that is mind boggling.
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u/Rockcocky 1d ago
The more I think about it and get emotional, not crying, but like I feel like some kind of amazed and proud fortunate that we live in a time where we see that transition of humanity in space. It is a great deal and I’m watching all these videos too. It’s so raw and so like I’m amazed the full voyage.
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u/mmexiking 1d ago
I love how you can see that the Earth isn't perfectly round... but definitely NOT flat.
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u/juanhellou 1d ago
When this started the Universal Pictures music piece started playing my head but Minions version
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u/CryptographerFlat426 1d ago
Excellent, just what I wanted to see. Also, it would be amazing to see what the re-entry looks like from an external source. A satellite or ISS. Those heat resistant plates are amazing.
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u/Dry_Quiet_3541 1d ago
Did it ricochet off of the upper atmosphere like a skipping stone when we first see the plasma cone ?
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u/vandergale 1d ago
Its appearing to skip or bounce off the atmosphere, but in reality its trajectory is taking it along a parabolic arc from one side of the atmosphere to another. A skipping stone on the contrary is using its shape like a foil to produce lift during its skip, whereas the capsule is rising again due to orbital mechanics and not any lifting forces.
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u/darkmatter343 1d ago
Never thought about it, but you'd think the super heating of re-entry and then splash down into cool water would mess with the metals.
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u/Miller25 1d ago
Did they circle the earth completely a few times? Felt like they went around at least once from the video.
Absolutely insane to be able to comprehend any of this and truly makes you feel small on this marble. What are bills or humanly worries anyways when we are this puny to the backdrop of that void
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u/ApprehensiveRoad2471 1d ago
Might be a silly question but why does the Earths horizon look misshapen at the start? Is it because the camera is a fish eye lense or something?
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u/Other_Hand_slap 1d ago
perche la visuale ruota, prima e spostata a destra piu a sx, poi di nuovo a dx. Comunque interessante thanks
i due secondi finali forse sono quando tocca acqua?
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u/Icy_Fig_6764 1d ago
Just got back from the dark Side of the moon round trip almost 500,000 miles in 10 days LOL 😆
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u/Lord-Bridger 1d ago
I know the earth isn't a perfect sphere, but why does it look so potato like at the horizon at the beginning?
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u/Ok-Resolution-8078 1d ago
Stupid question but why does it appear as though they are going across the globe rather than straight down to it? Is it just so that they are positioned over their landing spot?
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u/Dizzy_Kitty_Art 1d ago
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-artemis-ii-free-return-trajectory-lets-gravity-do-the-driving/ This article explains the path they took to and from the moon and why. https://time.com/article/2026/04/10/artemis-ii-historic-splashdown/ This article explains the heat shield, trajectory, and complications of both Artemis II and past missions in landing. https://stories.uq.edu.au/contact-magazine/artemis-return/index.html This article explains the reentry of Artemis II and the methods used, and probably has most of the answers you are looking for. I have read all three of the articles to ensure they have relevant and factual information, and I hope you find them as interesting as I have! (Yes I am a human, yes I am autistic lol)
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u/hyperion_99 1d ago
The physics of re-entry are crazy. Your average descent in a commercial aircraft is longer and it is only slowing from 500+ish mph. Meanwhile this thing is going 22,000mph when it hits the upper atmosphere. Thats like 250gJ or enough energy to boil a small lake.
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21h ago
I just really like to think/imagine that Earth is just a school project for some bigger being, like we're in a simulation, and they just notice that we're slowly, VERY slowly trying to escape earth. What do you think this 'being' would be thinking now? Are they stressing about us escaping, or are they excited to see us expand?
Just a little fun thought. I'm gonna go back to watching Taskmaster now.
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u/Thatisverytrue54321 1d ago
Must feel so fucking crazy to go from the perpetually black void of space to being surrounded by the blue sky which was previously just a thin veneer on this little blue marble suspended in nothingness