The Artemis II crew is coming home. The four astronauts onboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft are set to splash down Friday evening off the coast of San Diego, Calif., capping a 10-day, nearly 700,000-mile journey around the moon and back.
So far, everything is going to plan: On Thursday NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen reviewed return procedures, spoke with flight director Rick Henfling and packed up the spacecraft in preparation for splashdown.
The spacecraft also completed the second of three planned engine burns to keep it on the right return trajectory to enter Earth’s atmosphere. A final burn is scheduled for Friday afternoon.
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All systems were “good to go” for reentry, Artemis II Orion vehicle manager Branelle Rodriguez said at a press conference on Thursday.
As of Friday morning at 8:50 A.M. EDT, the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, was located less than 75,000 miles from home and traveling more than 4,700 miles per hour.
NASA anticipates the crew will reenter Earth’s atmosphere at just under 25,000 mph and ultimately slow to less than 20 mph as they plunge into the Pacific Ocean around 8:07 P.M. EDT.
Despite concerns about the heat shield, which had experienced unexpected damage during Artemis I’s reentry in 2022 that had prompted a subsequent investigation, NASA is confident about the Artemis II crew’s return to Earth.
“Every system we've demonstrated over the past nine days—life support, navigation, propulsion, communications—all of it depends on the final minutes of flight,” said NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya at Thursday’s press conference. “We have high confidence in the system and the heat shield and the parachutes and the recovery systems we put together.”
“The engineering supports it. The Artemis I flight data supports it. All of our ground tests supports it. Our analysis supports it. And tomorrow the crew is going to put their lives behind that confidence,” Kshatriya said.