NASA’s Artemis II — the first crewed lunar mission in more than half a century — is coming back to Earth today after completing its historic trip around the moon.
The four-member crew — NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen — have one of the most harrowing parts of the journey ahead of them: reentry. It’s a roaring plunge through Earth’s atmosphere, moving 32 times faster than the speed of sound. This process can heat the Orion capsule’s exterior to more than 5,000°F.
“The Orion spacecraft will enter the Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 25,000 miles per hour. That heat shield … will bear the full force of that reentry,” Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, said Thursday. “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.”
The 10-day mission is due to conclude today when the Orion spacecraft, dubbed Integrity, is scheduled to splash down around 8:07 p.m. ET in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles off the coast of San Diego. The Navy’s USS John P. Murtha will then recover the crew and the Orion capsule.
During Monday’s seven-hour lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts set a new record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by humans — 252,756 miles, surpassing the previous mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
Yahoo will be streaming live coverage of the crew’s return to Earth this evening, starting at 6:30 p.m. ET.
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