Artemis II crew to return home as Nasa lays out steps for safe splashdown | Nasa
The crew of Artemis II is preparing to return to earth Friday after its historic 10-day Moon flyby mission, and NASA leaders have outlined exactly the logistics needed to get them home.
On return, the Orion capsule will travel at approximately 24,000 mph and then make a final landing a few miles off the coast of San Diego. The operation requires multiple teams and careful coordination to safely extract the crew from the spacecraft.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, NASA deputy administrator Amit Kshatriya said: “Every engineer, every technician who touches this machine belongs to you tomorrow. The crew did their part. Now we must do our part too.”
Jeff Radigan, the mission’s lead flight director, emphasized the precision required for reentry and noted that the team had “less than a degree of angle” to achieve the correct flight path. “Let’s not beat around the bush. We have to get this angle right, otherwise we won’t be able to make a successful reentry,” he said.
Radigan outlined the timeline for the spacecraft’s return. The Orion crew module and service module are set to separate at 16.33 PT (19.33 ET, 12.33 UK time), with the service module burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. This will be followed by crew module upgrade burn-in at 4:37 PM PT and Orion’s entry interface at 4:53 PM PT, resulting in a brief power outage. The drogue parachutes will be deployed at 5:03 pm PT, followed by the main parachutes, followed by the final descent at 5:07 pm PT.
He added that the splashdown would occur well off the coast of southern California. “The way we’re coming, I don’t expect it to be visible to people in California… We’re working with the War Department to recover the capsule there, and it’s a pretty large exclusion zone, so I want to warn people… please avoid the area,” Radigan said.
“There’s a lot of debris falling down and we’re working with our rescue forces to make sure it doesn’t hit them,” he added.
Branelle Rodriguez, the mission’s Orion vehicle manager, explained the type of debris expected during the splashdown: “When the crew module comes back, the forward compartment hatch, which is the top part of the crew module, actually comes off and pulls out your first set of parachutes.” Three sets of parachutes went out, he said, and when each was released, they fell into the “keep out zone where the team is in the water” from which the public should stay away.
USS John P Murtha is ready to assist with rescue operations, which will take place in several phases and are expected to last one to one and a half hours. “There are a number of systems that we need to start shutting down in an orderly manner, and then the crew needs to orient themselves and start ‘securing’ the spacecraft so they can open the hatch, and that takes a while,” Radigan said.
He added that rescuers should initially remain at a safe distance. “In parallel, of course, rescue forces… have to stay miles away as debris emerges.”
“Once we confirm there is no risk… which takes a few minutes, then they can approach the spacecraft and begin the process of extracting the crew… It takes some time to get the rescue forces into the capsule and then help the crew out of the capsule and onto the forward porch, which is actually the buoyancy portion of the rescue forces that attach to the spacecraft,” Radigan said.
Following the landing, the crew will undergo post-mission medical evaluations before flying to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Thursday’s press conference followed a late briefing on Wednesday in which the Artemis II crew reflected on their journey.
Pilot Victor Glover, the first Black man to travel beyond low Earth orbit, said: “We need to go back. There’s a lot of data that you’ve already seen, but all the good things are coming back with us. There’s more pictures, a lot more stories.” He added: “Riding a fireball through the atmosphere is also very impressive.”
Meanwhile, mission commander Reid Wiseman, whose wife Carroll died of brain cancer in 2020, prompting the team to name a crater after her during the trip, said: “Our brains have a lot to process… and this is a real gift.”
He added that the 40-minute communications blackout the crew experienced while flying behind the far side of the moon earlier this week was “surreal.”
