Orion faced intense heat, a communications failure and a parachute descent before landing.
Even if you’re one of the first people to go to the Moon in half a century, there’s no place like home.
Artemis II has reached the end of its historic lunar flyby. The Orion space capsule and its four astronauts crashed off the coast of San Diego on April 10 at 8:07 p.m. Eastern Time.
“A perfect water landing. All four crew members are in excellent shape,” said NASA commentator Rob Nallais. “It was for all intents and purposes a textbook assignment.”
Re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere gave the Orion capsule its most grueling test yet. The capsule touched the atmosphere for the first time since its launch at 7:53 p.m. at an altitude of approximately 122 kilometers and traveling at more than 38,000 kilometers per hour.
“What a trip,” Mission Commander Reid Wiseman said moments after splashdown.
The overall flight plan was not that different from that of the Apollo missions, Artemis II flight director Jeff Radigan said during an April 9 press briefing. “Overall, coming back from the Moon is very close to the same thing,” he said. “It’s a lot more like Apollo than some of our returns to low Earth orbit.”
Shortly after re-entry began, the crew was out of contact with mission control for approximately six minutes. Friction from the atmosphere heated Orion’s heat shield to nearly 2,800° Celsius, creating a layer of superheated plasma that blocked communication with the spacecraft.
NASA engineers will closely monitor the behavior of the heat shield. When the The Orion capsule of the Artemis I mission, without crew, returned to Earth in December 2022, the heat shield came back burned unexpectedly. Pieces of material were missing and other parts were cracked.
After extensive investigation, NASA announced in 2024 that the cause of carbonization was an accumulation of gases trapped beneath an outer layer of material called Avocado, designed to decompose and carry heat away from the spacecraft. Instead of redesigning the heat shield itself, NASA redesigned the spacecraft’s re-entry trajectory to reduce thermal stress on the shield.
At an altitude of 7.6 kilometers, Orion deployed a series of 11 parachutes to slow it to about 30 km/h for splashdown. Once in the water, five orange helium-filled airbags help the capsule stay upright and allow the astronauts to emerge onto a large raft called a porch. From there, the astronauts return to Houston by helicopter, boat and plane.
“From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern mission to the Moon, a new chapter in the exploration of our celestial neighbor comes to an end,” said commentator Nallais. “Integrity astronauts return to Earth.”
