After nearly 10 days in space, the four Artemis II crewmembers are preparing for their final and most critical milestone: returning safely to Earth. Their Orion capsule is scheduled to begin atmospheric entry at 7:53 p.m. ET, just southeast of Hawaii, and is expected to splash down about 13 minutes later—around 8:07 p.m. ET—in the Pacific off the coast of San Diego. To make that return, Orion will be traveling at roughly 25,000 miles per hour and will face peak temperatures near 5,000°F during descent.
Final day timeline and preparations
– The crew (NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen) will wake at 11:35 a.m. ET on the mission’s last day and begin preparing the spacecraft for reentry. That includes system checks and configuring Orion for descent.
– A final trajectory adjustment is planned for 2:53 p.m. ET to fine-tune the path home.
Service module separation and reentry
Shortly before hitting the atmosphere, Orion will separate from its service module, which provided propulsion, power and other support during the mission. The service module will fall back toward Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. The crewed capsule will continue on a roughly 13-minute high-speed plunge toward the surface. During the period of peak heating and deceleration, mission control expects a communications blackout of about six minutes.
Heat, deceleration and parachutes
The heat shield is the capsule’s primary protection during the intense heating of reentry. After the plasma-heating phase, a series of parachutes will deploy to slow Orion from hypersonic speeds down to about 20 miles per hour for splashdown. Engineers and flight controllers focus on hitting the correct reentry angle—too shallow and the vehicle could skip off the atmosphere; too steep and heating and loads increase. To reduce the most energetic portion of heating, mission planners adjusted Artemis II’s profile compared with Artemis I: Orion will come in steeper and faster to spend less time in the most intense heating phase.
Recovery operations
The Navy ship USS John P. Murtha is positioned close to the recovery zone. Once the capsule is floating, a recovery team will approach and attach an inflatable raft beneath the hatch so the crew can exit safely. Medical personnel will examine the astronauts immediately and oversee transfer to shipboard care. From there the crew will be flown back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Risks and mitigations
Reentry is inherently risky. Flight teams describe this phase as a brief but exacting window—roughly “13 minutes of things that have to go right.” The heat shield received particular attention after testing during Artemis I revealed some charring under test conditions, so engineers will be watching its performance closely. The steeper reentry profile is one of several adjustments intended to reduce exposure to the most severe thermal environment.
What the mission proved and what went wrong
Artemis II has already delivered important test results: it carried humans farther from Earth than any mission since Apollo, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The crew practiced manual control modes needed for future lunar docking, validated life-support systems for a four-person crew in a confined cabin, and captured imagery and geological observations of the lunar far side from a unique vantage point.
Not every system performed perfectly. The mission’s first lunar-capable toilet experienced problems tied to the overboard-venting system for full urine tanks; the crew at times used manual urinals instead. NASA said the issue was related to the venting system rather than the toilet hardware itself.
Post-recovery inspections and next steps
After splashdown and crew recovery, Orion will be returned to Kennedy Space Center for detailed postflight inspections. Engineers will examine the heat shield, life-support hardware and plumbing to assess in-flight performance and to inform design changes ahead of Artemis III, the next planned mission.
If all goes as planned on reentry day, Artemis II will conclude as a successful crewed flight test that advances NASA’s preparations for returning humans to the lunar surface.