Springer Math

Returning from its lunar mission, NASA's Artemis II Orion capsule had an elegant splashdown on April 10, 2026, with a cluster of three large parachutes. The spacecraft parachute fluid-structure interaction (FSI) methods and simulations reported by Tezduyar and Takizawa in Space–Time Computational Flow Analysis: A Chronological Catalog of Unconventional Methods https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-88727-7 and First-of-Its-Kind Solutions helped NASA in testing and evaluating various parachute designs and reaching the final design used in the landing. The book describes the unconventional methods they introduced to address the computational challenges involved in spacecraft parachute FSI. It also describes the first-of-its-kind simulations their team carried out for various parachute designs, starting with the scaled-up version of the Apollo-era parachutes. Their simulations and NASA drop tests showed that those parachutes did not have the shape stability required for safe aerodynamic performance. Their team was the only computational parachute FSI group involved in the process of reaching the final design, with their FSI simulations, also reported in the book, showing a stable aerodynamic performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQ90XbmyNw