Timeline of the Artemis II moon mission’s return to Earth

from NASA Artemis II the return of the mission to Earth, hour by hour

By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner

After a record-breaking round trip around the Moon, the Artemis II mission is on its way back to Earth and preparations are in full swing for its final descent. NASA is targeting the splashdown – the moment when the capsule containing the crew hits the Pacific Ocean – for Friday at 8:07 p.m. EDT. But the hours and minutes leading up to that moment are all crucial.

The four Artemis II astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — will start their day at 11:35 a.m. Shortly after, around 1:50 p.m., they will work setting up the capsule’s cramped cabin for re-entry, stowing luggage and making sure everything they need for their trip into Earth’s atmosphere is ready to go.

Then, NASA scheduled a final trajectory correction burn at 2:53 p.m. if necessary to maintain the mission’s Orion capsule, named Integrity by the crew, en route to its final target: Earth.

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The astronauts will also review their re-entry checklist to ensure they are each wearing their spacesuits correctly, which will help protect them during the potentially bumpy descent and clarify their responsibilities during the fall.

NASA will livestream the entire process, with the space agency’s own broadcast coverage beginning around 6:30 p.m., just over an hour before the capsule re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.

Moments before that, the capsule will abandon its bulky service module approximately 42 minutes before landing. Then, around 7:37 p.m., the Orion capsule will perform a rapid burn to get into the right position and attitude for re-entry and landing. Subsequently, around 7:53 p.m., Orion will re-enter Earth’s upper atmosphere some 400,000 feet above the surface, beginning a 13-minute descent. At that point, the capsule will be traveling at around 24,000 miles per hour.

During the first two minutes of this descent, the spacecraft will plunge 200,000 feet, at which point it will experience temperatures reaching 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) because the air molecules in front of it will compress so violently, according to NASA. When the capsule falls, it will experience extreme pressure and heat stress. NASA designed the Orion capsule with a protective layer, a heat shield, designed to char, melt and disintegrate in such a way that heat does not penetrate the interior of the spacecraft. It will also experience a six-minute communications outage, during which the heat will effectively reduce the crew’s ability to communicate with mission control.

At this point, the spacecraft’s thrusters will help slow the descent. Along the way, the craft will also roll from side to side to burn off some excess energy.

After about nine minutes of descent, the spacecraft will be traveling just below the speed of sound at about 35,000 feet above the Earth’s surface. At that point, the capsule will begin to deploy its parachutes. It has four sets: the front bay cover parachutes, the drugs, the pilots and the network.

The drug deployment will occur around 10 minutes, bringing Orion from 24,000 feet to 6,800 feet. The pilots will then deploy, followed by the array, which will gently guide the spacecraft toward the water its final 5,000 feet at about 17 mph.

Landing is scheduled for 8:07 p.m. in the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of San Diego, California. During this 13-minute period, the crew will have actually traveled 1,701 nautical miles.

There, the USS John P. Murtha will wait for them. Within two hours of the astronauts landing, divers will help extract them from the capsule and load them into helicopters that will transport them to the ship. They will then undergo preliminary medical examinations on board before returning to dry land.

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