{"id":243089,"date":"2026-04-10T04:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T04:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/243089\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T04:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T04:27:14","slug":"how-houston-is-making-sure-artemis-ii-astronauts-get-home-safely-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/243089\/","title":{"rendered":"How Houston is making sure Artemis II astronauts get home safely"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crew members aboard NASA\u2019s Orion spacecraft are preparing for their return to Earth<\/a>, marking the final phase of a mission that officials say remains as critical as launch.<\/p>\n

By Thursday evening, the crew had reached the halfway point of their journey home and spent time packing up the spacecraft for reentry. A splashdown is expected just after 7 p.m. local time Friday off the coast of San Diego, with weather and ocean conditions expected to be favorable.<\/p>\n

RELATED: How to watch Artemis II astronauts splash down after historic mission<\/a><\/p>\n

While much of the mission has proceeded smoothly, NASA officials emphasized that reentry carries significant risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery engineer, every technician that\u2019s touched this machine \u2014 tomorrow belongs to you,\u201d said Amit Kshatriya, a NASA associate administrator. \u201cThe crew has done their part. Now we have to do ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside NASA\u2019s mission evaluation room in Houston, teams of engineers continue to track every system on the spacecraft. Orion program manager Howard Hu said the group is responsible for identifying and resolving any issues that arise during flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there\u2019s anything going on, it\u2019s this engineering team that is responsible for deducing what the issues are and helping the flight control team recover the system,\u201d Hu said.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft was designed with redundancy in mind, meaning most systems have backups \u2014 and in some cases, multiple backups \u2014 to ensure crew safety.<\/p>\n

Engineers reported only minor issues during the mission, including a problem with the spacecraft\u2019s toilet and a couple of faulty valves. None were considered serious.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will fix what we need to fix for future missions,\u201d Hu said.<\/p>\n

Work on those future missions is already underway as part of NASA\u2019s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon. Officials say later missions, including Artemis V, are intended to build toward sustained lunar exploration.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it is about landing people on the moon,\u201d Hu said. \u201cWe are the transportation. It feels great that we\u2019re operating the spaceship, getting people to the lunar vicinity. Now, once we establish that transportation, I want to see astronauts get on the lander, do the science they need to do, back into Orion and get them back home.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA officials said they remain confident heading into splashdown, calling the mission a success so far, with final recovery operations set to begin once the spacecraft reaches the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

Got a news tip or story idea? Email us at\u00a0newstips@khou.com<\/a>\u00a0or call 713-521-4310 and include the best way to reach you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crew members aboard NASA\u2019s Orion spacecraft are preparing for their return to Earth, marking the final phase of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[92942,56,58,57,92939,92941,1911,92940,90213],"class_list":{"0":"post-243089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-amit-kshatriya","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-howard-hu","13":"tag-mission-evaluation","14":"tag-nasa","15":"tag-nasa-officials","16":"tag-orion-spacecraft"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}