NASA’s Artemis II crew of four astronauts from the United States and Canada are set to return to Earth on Friday after their historic trip to the far side of the Moon.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen have spent 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft. They are expected to begin re-entry at 7:33 pm ET with a splashdown of 8:07 p.m.
NASA has a live feed for when the crew lands in the Pacific Ocean later today. The Orion spacecraft is expected to splash down off the coast of San Diego, California.
The Artemis II mission marks the first time humans have ventured to the moon’s orbit in more than 50 years. The crew traveled further from Earth than any humans have before, reaching an estimated 252,760 mile distance from our planet. That’s the same distance as traveling between New York City and Los Angeles around 100 times, only the astronauts are inside a capsule with 330 cubic feet of habitable space, which is about the size of two minivans.
The objective of the Artemis II mission is to collect data and insights that will help NASA prepare for future lunar missions and landings — the astronauts put the Orion spacecraft through planned tests to evaluate how it performs with a crew in deep space. This involves testing communication systems with colleagues on Earth, making trajectory adjustments, and making a safe re-entry and splashdown.
The splashdown could be one of the most dangerous moments of the whole mission. On the Artemis I mission in 2022, which did not have a crew, Orion’s protective heat shield was unexpectedly damaged upon its return to Earth. The heat shield is made of Avocoat — a material designed to slowly dissipate and protect the crew from temperatures approaching 5,000 degrees as it penetrates the Earth’s atmosphere — but the shield was charred and cracking in places, which was not supposed to happen.
If humans had been aboard Artemis I, they would’ve still returned safely, NASA said. The agency has also conducted extensive research about how the heat shield was damaged in the first place. Still, the heat shield remains top of mind as people around the world hope to see these four astronauts return safely.
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The crew left Earth on April 1st, and the astronauts quickly encountered some mundane missteps, including issues with Microsoft Office and their toilet. But these early moments were easily overshadowed by the wonder of the images and information that the crew sent back from the moon. You can already see new photos from the lunar flyby on the dark side of the moon.
The astronauts also named new craters, including one that was named after mission commander Wiseman’s late wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020 at age 46.
The crew was also able to witness a total solar eclipse from just a few thousand miles away from the moon, a unique vantage point that no astronaut had experienced before.
“It wasn’t just an eclipse with the Sun hidden behind the Moon,” Koch, the crew’s mission specialist, explained. “We could also see earthshine, the Sun’s light reflecting off Earth, wrapping the Moon in a soft, borrowed glow.”
The rest of the live broadcast is streaming here.