What to Expect Before the Fall of Artemis II

The Artemis II mission is about to end in just a few hours.

NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen in their Orion spacecraft – named Integrity – have set out on the journey of a lifetime as they travel around the Moon, the farthest journey by any human to date.

But now, they’re coming back terra firma.

All four are expected to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California tonight at 8:07 pm ET.

The return to Earth is harrowing, as they reach speeds of around 40,000 kilometers per hour, their capsule heated to 3,000 C.

Now imagine what that might feel like.

Their bodies would be going through about 4G. This means they will feel four times heavier than usual. It’s like being crushed.

At a press briefing Wednesday evening, Glover said it all: “Riding a fireball through the atmosphere is even darker. I’ll be thinking and talking about all these things for the rest of my life.”

In fact.

But before we get to that point, a lot has to happen before we even step four steps onto solid ground.

‘That’s when the fun really begins’

The European Space Agency’s European Space Module is powering Orion. It must be isolated before re-entry, which occurs approximately 20 minutes before kick-off.

A crew module burn may then occur to fine-tune Orion’s trajectory. Orion will then perform some roll maneuvers that will take it away from the service module.

The astronauts, who will be in their spacesuits, will keep their visors down. The spacecraft will be approximately 16,000 kilometers from its landing site.

“That’s when the fun really begins,” Artemis II fight director Rick Henfling said at a press conference Wednesday.

As the capsule re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, the plasma accumulated around the spacecraft will hinder any communication between NASA Ground Control and the astronauts. It is expected to last about six minutes. This they call LOS, or loss of signal.

“Once the six-minute blackout occurs, Orion will be about 150,000 feet (45,720 meters). So, still falling very rapidly,” Henfling said. “We’ve got two drogue parachutes that will deploy. They’ll be at about 22,000 feet (6,705 m). It’ll slow us down to about 200 mph (322 km/h).”

The crew endures that heat thanks to a heat shield called an avcoat.

However, after the uncrewed Artemis I mission, NASA engineers noticed that some of that material broke up as the gas was unable to escape and accumulated, causing some of the burned material to break apart.

While NASA did not replace the heat shield for Artemis II, they did conduct an investigation and modified re-entry procedures.

At an altitude of about 1,800 metres, the three main parachutes will deploy and slow the spacecraft to only 32 km/h, until splashdown over San Diego.

The entire sequence of events will take only 14 minutes.

after splashing

The astronauts will meet aboard the USS John P. Murtha, which departed days before the expected blast.

“After making sure the area is safe, they will go ahead and open the Orion hatch and help the astronauts from their seats to a large inflatable raft, which we call the front porch,” Artemis II landing and recovery director Liliana Villarreal said at a Wednesday press conference.

“Once all four astronauts are on the front porch, we will move the capsule away from the front porch, and the team will wait… The two helicopters will rotate, picking up all four crew members, before they return to the recovery ship within minutes of each other.”

If all goes according to plan, Coach will exit first, followed by Glover, Hansen and then Reed.

The astronauts will return to Houston’s Johnson Space Center after medical evaluation.

But there’s also all the science that they’ve collected.

Some of these will be sent to the space station immediately, while others will take time to collect.