ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) \u2014 A 13-minute window from the time the Orion spacecraft enters Earth’s atmosphere on Friday, to the moment it splashes down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.<\/p>\n
The decent will starts at nearly 24,000 mph before slowing down to 20 mph.<\/p>\n
“After an exciting day of science on Monday and a day for the crew to recover and then achieve some other flight objectives yesterday, the team is turning our attention to the return and getting the crew safely home,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, Acting Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems.<\/p>\n
From the specialized gear to the parachutes and brief communications blackout as Orion re-enters Earth’s orbit, every step has been planned, practiced and will be heavily monitored.<\/p>\n
“When the mission goes well, it can look like flying to the moon is easy. It certainly is not. We can’t forget that this is a test flight and are taking everything that we’re learning forward to support the next mission. This has been a good mission so far and we’re nearing the end, having retired a significant number of risks over recent days, but the team remains focused. And we’re making sure that we don’t take our eye off the ball. Countless hours of people working together behind the scenes have been preparing for these moments, and people are still giving their all to ensure mission success,” Hawkins stated.<\/p>\n
Artemis II’s Orion capsule is planned to hit Earth’s atmosphere at 7:53 p.m. EDT before landing off the coast of San Diego.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) \u2014 A 13-minute window from the time the Orion spacecraft enters Earth’s atmosphere on Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,856],"class_list":["post-161290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area","tag-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}