The Artemis II mission is nearing its conclusion shortly. A team composed of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen has voyaged around the moon aboard their Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, setting a new record for human travel distance. The expedition is about to return to Earth by splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the San Diego coast at 8:07 p.m. ET tonight.
The reentry process is a challenging one as the spacecraft will reach speeds close to 40,000 km/h, causing the capsule to heat up to 3,000 degrees Celsius. The astronauts will experience nearly 4 Gs, making them feel four times heavier than usual, akin to being under immense pressure.
As the crew prepares for reentry, certain critical maneuvers need to take place. The European Service Module, which has been powering the Orion, must detach before reentry, followed by potential trajectory adjustments through a crew module raise burn and roll maneuvers. The astronauts will don their spacesuits and lower their visors as the spacecraft positions itself around 16,000 kilometers from the landing site.
During reentry, a plasma buildup around the spacecraft will disrupt communication between NASA ground control and the crew for approximately six minutes, termed LOS or loss of signal. Following this blackout period, the spacecraft will descend rapidly until two drogue parachutes deploy at around 22,000 feet, slowing it down to about 200 miles per hour.
Despite using the Avcoat heat shield to endure the heat, NASA engineers made procedural modifications after observing material breakage in the uncrewed Artemis I mission due to gas buildup. The spacecraft will further slow down with the deployment of three main parachutes at about 1,800 meters, leading to a gentle splashdown off San Diego after a concise 14-minute sequence.
Upon splashdown, the USS John P. Murtha will greet the astronauts, opening the Orion hatch for their transfer to a large inflatable raft known as the front porch. Subsequently, the crew will be airlifted to the recovery ship by two helicopters for medical evaluations before heading back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The scientific data collected during the mission will be processed and analyzed, with some results sent promptly to the space center while others requiring more time for retrieval.