Almost everything has gone to plan for NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first human voyage beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972.
Launched on April 1, it is the first crewed test flight of the space agency’s Space Launch System megarocket and Orion crew capsule. The four brave astronauts onboard—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency—completed their historic lunar flyby five days later.
The biggest issue so far seems to have been a troublesome toilet—the first ever flown around the moon. It has repeatedly clogged and may be the source of a mysterious burning smell, turning the crew and mission controllers into part-time “space plumbers.”
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Still, now in the ninth day of their 10-day mission and with Earth looming larger in the spacecraft’s windows, the crew is facing what could be a fraught homecoming. On Friday around 7:45 P.M. EDT, after jettisoning its bulky service module, the Orion capsule will plunge into our planet’s atmosphere at a projected speed of about 24,000 miles per hour.
In the best-case scenario, what follows will be 13 minutes of nerve-racking tension—about half of which will be in radio blackout. As it falls, the spacecraft’s heat shield will endure temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) before Orion slows under parachutes to splash down off the coast of San Diego, Calif. There a fleet of naval ships will be waiting to recover the astronauts.
Day eight of the Artemis II astronauts’ voyage betrayed no signs of concern. Fueled by a stick-to-your-ribs menu featuring beef stew, chicken noodle soup and “cosmic” brownies, the crew’s activities included snapping a unique selfie, completing one last in-space workout session and testing compression garments meant to ease the physiological transition back to Earth gravity.
Mission controllers chose to call off the crew’s planned construction of a radiation shelter, explaining that most of Artemis II’s core objectives had already been demonstrated. A manual piloting demonstration was also canceled because of its potential interference with a pressurization test for part of the Orion spacecraft’s propulsion system.
In the evening, the astronauts spoke with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, discussing the relative merits of Nutella versus maple syrup on pancakes, as well as their favorite wake-up songs from the mission.
Day nine sees the astronauts very busy once again. Today they are focused on configuring the Orion capsule for return to Earth and carefully studying their planned reentry procedures. No matter how carefree the crew and the personnel of Houston Ground Control may seem, they know all too well the high stakes of the imminent homecoming.
“I’ve actually been thinking about entry since April 3, 2023, when we got assigned to this mission,” said Glover, Artemis II’s pilot, when asked how he was feeling about the return at a Wednesday press conference. “There’s so many more pictures, so many more stories. And, gosh, I haven’t even begun to process what we’ve been through. We’ve still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well.”