{"id":10249,"date":"2026-04-07T09:54:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=10249"},"modified":"2026-04-07T09:54:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:54:47","slug":"nasa-to-artemis-ii-use-a-t-shirt-to-block-the-sunlight-in-our-24-billion-spaceship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=10249","title":{"rendered":"NASA to Artemis II: ‘Use a T-shirt to block the sunlight’ in our $24 billion spaceship"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Given its $24 billion price tag and two decades in development, one would think that the Artemis II mission\u2019s Orion spaceship would be flawless. Alas, that\u2019s not how things work in the space program. These machines\u2019 designs are so complex and so many things can go wrong that there is always going to be a breaking point somewhere. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sometimes this involves comical but potentially dangerous consequences\u2014like Artemis II\u2019s toilet malfunction or its Microsoft Outlook glitches\u2014while other times there are tragic endings, like the losses of the space shuttles Challenger<\/em> and Columbia<\/em> and their crews. Still, I wasn\u2019t expecting a \u201cuse a T-shirt or something to block the sunlight rather than the spaceship\u2019s built-in window shades\u201d in my 2026 NASA bingo card.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what happened on Day 4 of the ongoing lunar flyby. I was listening to the highlights when this exchange\u2014which I\u2019ll explain below\u2014between Mission Control and the Artemis II crew<\/a> happened:<\/p>\n

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Houston: We have a small request for you guys. Um, with this attitude that we\u2019re using for the bakeout, we\u2019re getting the sun on the window shades and we\u2019re a little worried about them heating up too much. We would like to request that you please remove the window shades. We understand that will make it awfully bright for you guys, and we want to encourage you to use a T-shirt in the cabin or something similar, if needed, to block out that sunlight. But the shades will help us with the temperature constraint on the windows.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Maybe in space, nobody can hear you scream. But after that, I swear I heard four astronauts rolling their eyes all the way from 240,000 miles up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Orion: Okay. Uh, so we have our makeshift T-shirt on Window 1. Is that one okay to stay up then, based on what you said? And we\u2019ll take off the Window 2 shade. The other ones are already off.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You may be wondering why in the name of Lyndon B. Johnson the crew of Artemis II was forced to use some old Taylor Swift concert T-shirts to block the sunlight. And yes, \u201cWhat the rocket nozzle?!\u201d is exactly<\/em> the exclamation that came to my mind, too. Flying to the moon is not like going from Houston to Dallas in a Greyhound bus in the middle of August. Why couldn\u2019t they use the built-in shades, which probably cost several million dollars to develop along with the Orion windows? After all, aren\u2019t those windows supposed to sustain the heat of the reentry? How can they get damaged by a<\/em> shade<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Top picture: The Orion capsule\u2019s windows without their black shades. Bottom: The cone windows with the shades on. [Images: NASA]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The explanation<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s go through what we know: On April 4, Orion was turned into a \u201cbakeout\u201d position.\u00a0In spacecraft operations, this specific orientation intentionally exposes parts of the spacecraft to prolonged, direct solar radiation, often to outgas materials or manage ice buildup. In this case, that sunlight was shining directly on the windows and hit the inside window shades. Sunlight in deep space, unfiltered by Earth\u2019s atmosphere, is blindingly bright, so astronauts use the shades to block it in order to manage their sleep cycle and to avoid excessive sunlight in the cabin.<\/p>\n

Since the opaque shades absorb solar energy, they also absorb heat. So Mission Control became concerned that the shades were getting too hot. But the problem was not the temperature of the shades. It was the windows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given its $24 billion price tag and two decades in development, one would think that the Artemis II mission\u2019s Orion spaceship would be flawless. Alas, that\u2019s not how things work in the space program. These machines\u2019 designs are so complex and so many things can go wrong that there is always going to be a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brand-spotlights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}