ISLAMABAD-For Artemis missions, NASA’s Orion spacecraft will be traveling at 25,000 mph as it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere, which will slow it down to 325 mph. Parachutes will then bring it down to about 20 mph. During the parachute deploy sequence, hardware will be jettisoned and fall into the Pacific Ocean below while the recovery ship awaits near the landing site. Keeping the ship and recovery team safe is critical to mission success. The Landing and Recovery team, led by Exploration Ground Systems at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is prepared to safely recover Orion and attempt to recover the jettisoned hardware. A four-person team of engineers from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will also be onboard the U.S. Navy recovery ship with a “Sasquatch” — no, not an elusive hairy creature, but a very important software tool created specifically for Orion. “Sasquatch is the software NASA uses to predict large footprints — that’s why we call it Sasquatch — of the various debris that is released from the capsule as it is reentering and coming through descent,” said Sarah Manning, a Sasquatch operator and aerospace engineer from the Engineering Directorate at Johnson. The hardware jettisoned, or released, during parachute deployment includes drogue and pilot parachutes that help initially slow and stabilize Orion, along with other elements necessary for the parachute sequence to deploy. The primary objective for the Sasquatch team is to help get the ship as close as possible to recover Orion quickly. A secondary objective is to recover as much hardware as possible.