Originally Posted by
sycamore
What happens to the `service` module after it is cast adrift...? Still orbiting,or left to `burn-up`..?
Further,are the parachutes recovered,or left to sink..?
During the NASA livestream yesterday, I heard either the reporter on the USS John P. Murtha (Ms. Cruz - google says it's Megan C.), or the highly recognizable NASA Mission Control voice (the eminently authoritative and yet calm Rob Navias), state that recovery of the parachutes was in work by the divers. Whether that element of the recovery activity was completed successfully, I do not know.
As for the European Service Module (ESM) of the Artemis II Orion spacecraft, as widely known it was built pursuant to NASA agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) and specifically by Airbus Defence and Space (Bremen, Germany). Wikipedia confirms what I thought was probably its technological heritage; the ESM was based on ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which conducted supply and trash disposal missions to and from the International Space Station (ISS). As a result, other things being equal, the ESM would have followed a re-entry trajectory resulting in burning up in the atmosphere, similar to the ATV spacecraft. But wait.....
Other things are not at all equal. Separation of the Orion Command Module from the ESM occurred 20 or 30 minutes prior to Orion starting its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. We know this because Orion had to be reoriented so that the heat shield was facing forward (which I recall from the broadcast yesterday; which also makes sense based on fundamental mission and module architecture carried over from Apollo; and which specific number(s) of minutes as stated via google). At the time of ESM "sep", the spacecraft were traveling, as it were, the reverse trajectory of TLI, Translunar Injection, and though I claim no knowledge of either the maths or physics of orbital dynamics, the ESM - if I am understanding the particular factors correctly and properly - not only burned up as a result of its atmospheric re-entry . . . given its lack of heat shield, it really, really, got burned out. Or up.
Which perhaps leaves an opening for a wisecrack. The ESM was built by a multinational space agency in Europe, built by a European aerospace company, built in Bremen. Sehr gut! And at the same time, the recent information on a different thread about bomber missions during the conflict in Iran and the Middle East continues to evoke images from the 1949 Hollywood film, somewhat based on and true to the historical factual record, "Twelve O'Clock High" (Gregory Peck, in the starring role). About daylight bombing raids during the Second World War against Germany. There is such a huge, seemingly inexplicable gap between those missions, and the successful mission of the European ESM and Orion CM. I take this as an occasion to suggest there should be no gap between our - the United States' - partners and friends in space programs and technologies. And further to suggest that those who bash Europe's manifest connections both to the United States and to the world's interconnected systems being run on the basis of something like "rules" really are speaking in idiocies. Those interconnected systems have no "Separation" on their operational timeline. And if such separation were possible - which it is not - at least one of the separated "spacecraft" will really, really burn up.
[edited for correction of certain typos]