It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s a Super Guppy! 🐟 On Nov. 9, crews transported the Orion heat shield skin for the Artemis IV mission to Moffett Federal Airfield near NASAAmes Research Center via NASA’s oversized cargo transport aircraft, the Super Guppy. The recently delivered heat shield skin will undergo heat- and pressure-treatment at Lockheed Martin's facility in Sunnyvale, California. Orion's heat shield protects the spacecraft and the astronauts inside from the intense heat generated while re-entering Earth's atmosphere. The heat shield has an underlying titanium skeleton covered by a carbon fiber skin. More than 180 unique blocks are bonded to the heat shield's skin and will slowly burn away as the spacecraft travels through Earth's atmosphere during re-entry. At 16.5 feet (about 5 meters) in diameter, the Orion heat shield and its corresponding skin is the largest heat shield base ever developed for human spaceflight missions. Unlike other aircraft, the Super Guppy aircraft ...