Orion is set to splash down off the California coast on Friday, ending the Artemis II crew’s 10-day mission after a historic lunar flyby. The spacecraft is scheduled to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and reach the Pacific Ocean at 5:07 p.m. PT, or 8:07 p.m. ET, on April 10.
The final stretch will be brief and brutal. Orion will be falling to Earth at more than 24,000 mph when it hits the atmosphere, and the crew will lose contact with Mission Control within seconds as the capsule moves into a planned blackout lasting about six minutes. By the time Orion reaches splashdown off San Diego, California, it will have taken about 13 minutes to travel the final 400,000 feet from space to the ocean.
That is the moment NASA has spent years preparing for. The reentry heating can reach up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and Orion’s heat shield is designed to take the punishment that protects the spacecraft and crew through the most intense part of descent. Once the capsule emerges from the blackout, specially designed parachutes will deploy and are expected to slow it to about 20 mph before splashdown.
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Barry “Butch” Wilmore, one of the Artemis II astronauts, said the return from deep space is unlike anything the crew faced on the way out. “Everything’s different,” he said, noting that the speeds are much greater coming back and that the team has to stay on task because there is little it can do once reentry begins. He said crew members cannot afford to let apprehension take over and must focus on their jobs because the consequences of a mistake are severe.
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The blackout on Friday is not the same as the 40-minute loss of communications the crew experienced during the lunar flyby, when Orion passed behind the moon and radio signals were physically blocked. This time, the interruption will be caused by plasma formed as the spacecraft plunges through Earth’s atmosphere. That difference makes the final minutes a test of systems as much as nerve. Artemis II is expected to answer the question of when will artemis land with a precise answer: Friday at 8:07 p.m. ET.
