Artemis II Astronauts To Return Home Today: What To Know

Artemis II Astronauts To Return Home Today: What To Know

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

Humanity’s first mission around the Moon in more than 50 years is coming home the way of a meteor.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch—as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency—will reenter Earth’s atmosphere in their Orion spacecraft Integrity at approximately 7:53 p.m. on April 10.

Artemis II’s 10-day journey beyond the moon to the farthest point away from Earth that humans have traveled will end with the astronauts’ ride in a fireball through the sky and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at approximately 8:07 p.m.

This is the pinnacle of the adventure that Glover has been thinking about since he got assigned to the mission on April 3, 2023, and NASA officials have been thinking about it since even before that.

After Artemis I, the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield and reentry trajectory went through a drastic redesign.

NASA’s associate administrator, Amit Kshatriya, affirmed on April 9 that the crew and everyone involved were confident in Integrity’s systems.

Reentry Timeline

NASA’s Rick Henfling will be the flight director at mission control during reentry and splashdown, and he outlined the course of events ahead of the mission’s dramatic conclusion.

11:35 a.m. EDT—The crew will wake up and start their day. They will make final preparations and configure the cabin for reentry as Integrity gets closer to home and travels faster and faster.

Those preparations include donning the orange-and-blue pressure suits they wore for launch and stowing all remaining loose equipment for reentry. One final course correction burn is also scheduled.

7:33 p.m.—Integrity’s Orion crew module will separate from its European Service module—the deep-space workhorse that kept Artemis II on course, provided power and life support, and offered exterior vantage points from which photographs were taken and shared with the world.

Shortly after separation, the crew capsule will fire its own thrusters to optimize its reentry angle and distance itself from the service module, which is now doomed and will burn up in the atmosphere.

7:53 p.m.—Integrity starts its reentry at an altitude of 400,000 feet, nearly 2,000 miles southwest of its landing zone in the Pacific Ocean. The astronauts will be falling backward, so the capsule’s heat shield is facing forward, and upside down, so the crew can see the horizon line.

An infographic featuring the Artemis II Orion lofted entry sequence, presented by Artemis II Flight Director Rick Henfling during the mission status briefing to the media and public at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on April 8, 2026. NASA

The spacecraft must hit the Earth’s atmosphere at the right angle to pass through safely.

Fight director Jeff Radigan told reporters on April 9 that Mission Control was continuing to review data and telemetry to ensure that Artemis II remains on course.

“We got less than a degree of angle that we need to hit,” Radigan said. “We’ve got a little bit of wiggle room. We don’t plan to use that.”

Artemis II is expected to reach a top speed of 34,965 feet per second, approximately 23,864 mph, just short of the mission’s overall top speed of approximately 24,500 mph.

This means they will fail to break Apollo 10’s record-setting speed of 36,397 feet per second, or 24,816 mph.

Radigan told The Epoch Times that Artmeis II’s return home would be very similar to the Apollo mission that came before it. They are essentially coming straight down and much faster compared with reentries from low-Earth orbit.

Integrity will essentially become a man-made meteor, engulfed in a ball of fire and plasma and facing temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it rips through the atmosphere.

The crew inside is expected to experience g-forces of 3.9. That is 3.9 times the force of normal gravity on Earth.

However, Henfling said that type of g-force would be experienced during a nominal trajectory. If the crew had to take any of the contingency trajectories mapped out, they could experience g-forces of up to 7.5.

Their capsule will perform multiple roll reversal maneuvers to distribute heat evenly across the heat shield and help slow down.

However, they will not be piloting the capsule. Radigan confirmed that although the crew has been trained and is capable of taking control if necessary, Integrity’s computer will fly the crew home.

Mission Control expects to lose contact with Integrity 24 seconds after entry interface.

Henfling said that as plasma builds up around the spacecraft, it interferes with telemetry. That blackout is expected to last about six minutes.

7:59 p.m.—Integrity will reacquire signal with Mission Control and will be down to an altitude of about 150,000 feet and falling.

About nine minutes into reentry, Earth’s atmosphere will slow the Orion capsule to subsonic speeds.

8:03 p.m.—Integrity drops to about 22,000 feet, and drogue parachutes deploy.

At about 6,000 feet, the main parachutes will deploy.

8:07 p.m.—Artemis II splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. In 13 minutes, Integrity will have slowed from approximately 25,000 mph to just 20 mph.

8:22 p.m.—Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen power down Integrity.

Recovery Operations

Artemis II will be recovered in a joint operation between NASA and the Department of War. The USS John P. Murtha, the recovery ship, left port in San Diego on April 7 to assume its position and await recovery.

The targeted time to extract the astronauts from the capsule is 9:06 p.m.

The USS John P. Murtha pictured with an Orion crew capsule during a recovery test in preparation for NASA’s Artemis I uncrewed test flight on March 14, 2020. NASA

Debbie Korth, Orion deputy program manager, said the goal is to have the crew out of the capsule and on the recovery ship within two hours after splashdown.

They will also have several aircraft circling the area to get eyes on the returning craft as soon as possible.

Divers will arrive on-scene first and open the hatch.

Medical personnel will then enter the capsule to assess the crew. Hansen will be reached first, followed by Wiseman, then Koch, and Glover.

Once everyone is cleared by the medics, Koch will be the first to leave the capsule, followed by Glover, then Hansen.

Wiseman, Artemis II’s commander, will be the last to step outside.

The crew will then be lifted into helicopters and transferred to the recovery ship in the same order they left Integrity.

Once aboard, they will be taken to a medical bay for further evaluation.

That whole process is expected to take at least 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, teams will remain on-site to secure Integrity, which will be towed aboard the recovery ship via its amphibious transport dock.

The crew is scheduled to fly back to Johnson Space Center in Houston between 12 and 24 hours after recovery, and their Orion capsule will be trucked across the country to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

All of the remaining science the crew collected, including images yet to be downlinked and the biological experiments, such as the AVATAR project, which flew on board to learn how deep space affects human health, will be sent off to their respective teams for analysis.

“We have to get back,” Glover said during a call with the media on April 8. “There’s so much data that you’ve seen already, but all of the good stuff is coming back with us.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/10/2026 - 09:30