The crew of the Artemis II is approaching the end of a landmark journey around the moon, with their return to earth scheduled for Saturday, culminating in a high-stakes splashdown off the Californian coast in the Pacific Ocean.
The four astronauts aboard Orion — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — have spent their final full day in space preparing for re-entry. Their tasks included stowing equipment, securing cargo, configuring seating for landing loads, and reviewing updated weather forecasts alongside recovery operation plans.
As the spacecraft begins its descent, the service module will separate from the crew capsule before atmospheric entry. At this stage, Orion will be travelling at approximately 38,000 km/h. The intense heat of re-entry will generate a plasma sheath around the capsule, causing a communications blackout with earth expected to last around six minutes.
During descent, the crew will experience forces of up to 3.9g before the deployment of drogue parachutes at high altitude, followed by the main parachutes, which will slow the capsule for a controlled splashdown in the Pacific.
Following landing, recovery teams will extract the astronauts by helicopter and transfer them to the amphibious assault ship USS John P. Murtha, where they will undergo initial medical checks. They will then be flown to Houston’s Johnson Space Center for further evaluation and debriefing.
The Artemis II mission marks the first crewed lunar flyby since the Apollo era. Its successful completion is seen as a crucial milestone in NASA’s broader ambitions to return humans to the moon and advance deep space exploration.
