Flying by the moon, witnessing an eclipse and traveling farther from Earth than any humans before, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission have reached several milestones since launching nearly 10 days ago. If all goes to plan Friday, their most important milestone will be complete: getting home.
The Orion capsule is scheduled to begin atmospheric entry at 7:53 p.m. ET just southeast of Hawaii. About 13 minutes later, it is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, having punched through the atmosphere at roughly 25,000 miles per hour and endured temperatures up to about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As mission pilot Victor Glover put it, reentry is like “riding a fireball through the atmosphere.”
The crew — NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — have spent the past days preparing for return: packing equipment and reorienting Orion to set the trajectory that should lead to an 8:07 p.m. ET splashdown. On return day they will wake at 11:35 a.m. ET to reconfigure the capsule. A final trajectory correction burn is planned for 2:53 p.m. ET.
Before atmospheric entry, Orion will separate from its service module, which contains thrusters, solar panels and other hardware. Separation is scheduled for 7:33 p.m. ET; the service module will fall back and burn up in the atmosphere. Orion will then make its roughly 13-minute plunge, during which the crew is expected to lose contact with Mission Control for about six minutes.
A sequence of parachutes will deploy during descent to slow the capsule from reentry speed to about 20 miles per hour at splashdown. The USS John P. Murtha is positioned near the splash zone to aid recovery. A recovery team will reach the capsule, attach an inflatable raft at Orion’s side hatch, and a flight surgeon will examine the crew before helping them out. The astronauts will then be transported back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Reentry carries inherent risks. The capsule must enter the atmosphere at a precise angle. “We have to hit that angle correctly. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a successful reentry,” said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II’s lead flight director. The heat shield, which protects the crew from extreme reentry temperatures, remains a critical item of focus; after Artemis I, engineers identified char loss on the heat shield and adjusted plans for Artemis II to mitigate risk.
Instead of “skipping” through the atmosphere as Artemis I did, mission planners opted for a steeper, faster entry that reduces the time spent in the most intense heating and energy exchanges. Radigan described reentry as “13 minutes of things that have to go right,” and the team is following a strict checklist.
So far, Artemis II has met key test objectives. The mission took humans farther from Earth than any crew since Apollo 13 in 1970, tested Orion’s manual control systems needed for future docking with a lunar landing system, and validated life support for four astronauts in a confined capsule. The crew also observed parts of the lunar far side from perspectives never before available to humans; their images and geology notes will inform scientific understanding of the moon’s composition and history.
Not every system worked flawlessly in flight. The mission carried the first toilet intended for lunar missions, and teams encountered problems with the urine dump system; crew members resorted multiple times to manual urinals. NASA said the issue was with the dumping system rather than the toilet itself.
After recovery, Orion will be brought back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for detailed inspection. Engineers will closely examine the spacecraft, including its plumbing and the heat shield, to assess performance and identify changes ahead of Artemis III, planned for next year.