NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle heat shield candidate materials have just been tested under intense heat conditions, to see how they would hold up during Orion’s return and re-entry from a lunar mission. Philip Lorenz III reports that NASA engineers who specialize in arc heater testing teamed with the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee to modify the center’s High Enthalpy Aerothermal H2 test facility to accommodate the testing.
Air Force Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost—a trailblazer and one of the first 10 women to reach a four-star rank across the U.S. military—retired and passed control of U.S. Transportation Command to Air Force Gen. Randall Reed on Oct. 4, finishing an eventful tenure at TRANSCOM.