Artemis II returns today, if everything works okay. As I’ve said, there are some concerns about the heat shield, but not serious concerns. The space.com article below (click on it to read) gives the details as well as several links. I’ve put its video link (the best one, I think) below. Be sure to watch it live starting about 7:40 this evening, Eastern time, as several events will occur at or during re-entry.
Jim Batterson sent this link and added a few words:
In particular item #14 talks about their egress and being carried to the Navy recovery ship by helicopter. After the crew are safe on board the ship, I think that the capsule is simply retrieved into the ship’s onboard “well”. The astronauts are then helicoptered to firmer terra firma.
A short excerpt:
The Artemis 2 Orion capsule will return to Earth tonight, April 10, at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 April 11 GMT) with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. Returning home on the ship to end a 10-day trip to the moon are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist). You can watch the landing live on Space.com, beginning at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT). You can also follow the mission live online on our Artemis 2 mission updates page.
After an epic trip to the moon and back, it’s landing day for the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission. For the first time in over 53 years, astronauts are returning to Earth from the moon.
“Every system we’ve demonstrated over the past nine days — life support, navigation, propulsion, communications — all of it depends on the final minutes of flight,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya told reporters Thursday (April 9). “We have high confidence in the system, in the heat shield, and the parachutes and the recovery system that we’ve put together.”
Watch it all below:
Watching now.
Ditto. Very exciting!
Well … I’m watching it. 😉
Beautiful! Perfect!
Woo hoo!
And it’s home! 🥂
Well done, gentlemen and gentlewoman. Well done.
SPLASH! Yippee.
I had a bad 15 seconds or so when the comms black-out still hadn’t lifted after 6 minutes exactly. Yes I was timing it. Then I kept watching until the crew stepped out onto the deck from the helicopters.
Well done.
Yes. Blackout times are always scary to me too, Leslie. Whether it was their being on the far side of the moon and out of comm range or during re-entry ionization…the first being silly because Mr Newton will bring them around; the second giving real concern because of the heating and dynamic which cause it. The last bit that has me holding my breath is the parachute deployment scheme.
But it all worked!