How to watch NASA’s Artemis II moon mission splashdown off San Diego
Four days after the astronauts flew around the moon For the first time in half a century, ground crews in Southern California are making final preparations for the high-energy reentry and splashdown off the coast of San Diego, expected around 5 p.m. Pacific time on Friday.
Southern Californians probably won’t be able to see the reentry or splashdown in person, NASA officials said. But NASA broadcast the event live. Here’s what you need to know:
Four members of the Artemis II crew will blast through the atmosphere at about 24,000 mph (30 times the speed of sound), turning the air around the capsule into a hot fireball about half the size of the sun’s surface.
NASA will use a new, more direct reentry technique for the 2022 Artemis I test mission with no one on board after the heat shield unexpectedly broke in more than 100 points.
Artemis II pilot and SoCal native Victor Glover He had been considering re-entry since his appointment in 2023. Glover, still in space, was asked Wednesday evening about the moments from this mission that he will carry with him for the rest of his life, and he joked: “We’ve still got two days left, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is pretty impressive, too.”
How to watch
“I don’t expect the path we’re on to be visible to people in California,” Artemis II Chief Flight Director Jeff Radigan said at a news conference Thursday.
However, San Diegans hoping to catch a glimpse can look west over the Pacific around 5 p.m. for the best chance of seeing the Orion capsule, which appears as a fast, bright streak low in the sky.
“I would like to warn folks, please stay away from the area,” Radigan said of anyone hoping to get a closer look from a boat. “There’s a lot of debris coming down and we’re working with our rescue teams to make sure it doesn’t hit them. But of course we don’t want it to hit anyone else either.”
The last time NASA astronauts got into a brand new vehicle, the looks caused some problems. serious security concernsThis includes potentially exposing boaters to toxic chemicals and delaying the rescue of astronauts in the event of an emergency.
NASA for the best close-up views plans to broadcast live re-entry and bounce YouTube, netflix And HBO MaximumIt starts at 3:30 Pacific time.
San Diego Air and Space Museum is also a family friendly viewing party starts at 4pm
re-entry plan
NASA expects reentry to begin at approximately 4:53 PM Pacific time. (Yes, NASA’s “approximations” are that precise.)
When this happens, the agency expects communications to be lost for about six minutes as the Orion capsule holding the astronauts is surrounded by a fireball.
During all this, a team of NASA and Department of Defense test pilots will track the capsule on the planes as researchers on back-spot telescopes and sensors in the heat shield. NASA hopes to use this data to better understand how this protection holds up under the agency’s new reentry technique.
At around 5:03 p.m., two small parachutes will open and the ship’s speed will drop to approximately 300 mph. After a minute, much larger parachutes will open and the capsule’s speed will slow to about 17 mph. Three minutes later, around 5:07 p.m., the capsule will fall into the Pacific Ocean.
A team of Navy divers will then help the astronauts out of the capsule, and Navy helicopters will deploy to rescue them.
The helicopters will take the astronauts to the USS John P. Murtha. 680-foot-long, 25,000-ton Navy shipping dock battleship, For immediate medical evaluation. Navy divers will then secure the capsule and guide it to Murtha’s deck.
Helicopters will bring the astronauts back to shore as Murtha slowly returns to San Diego. The astronauts will fly to Houston to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to reunite with their families.
Boots on the Moon and one day on Mars
The Artemis program aims to eventually send humans back to the moon. NASA hopes to eventually establish a moon base that will serve as a testing ground for future missions to Mars.
This mission was primarily intended to test the capsule’s life support systems to help create a smoother journey for future crew who would have to deal with literal headaches. landing on the moon. This included troubleshooting the capsule’s space toilet (multiple times), manually checking the spacecraft, and testing procedures such as solar radiation protection in the cargo locker.
NASA plans to launch Artemis III, a mission in Earth orbit, in 2027 to test docking of the Orion spacecraft with SpaceX and Blue Origin’s lunar landers. NASA aims to launch Artemis IV, which will place humans on the surface of the moon, in 2028.
