NASA’s Artemis II crew of four astronauts from the United States and Canada is set to return to Earth on Friday after a historic trip to the far side of the Moon.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen spent 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft. They are expected to re-enter at 8:07 PM ET at 7:33 PM ET.
NASA has live coverage of the crew’s landing in the Pacific today. The Orion spacecraft is expected to splash off the coast of San Diego, California.
The Artemis II mission is the first time humans have orbited the Moon in more than 50 years. The crew has traveled further from Earth than any human has ever traveled, reaching a distance of approximately 252,760 miles from our planet. That’s the same distance as traveling from New York to Los Angeles about 100 times, only with the astronauts inside the capsule. 330 cubic feet living space the size of two minivans.
The purpose of the Artemis II mission is to gather information and insights that will help NASA prepare for future lunar missions and landings – astronauts spent the Orion spacecraft. scheduled tests to assess how it performs with a crew in deep space. This includes testing communications systems with counterparts on Earth, making trajectory corrections, and performing safe re-entry and jumps.
The jump can be one of the most dangerous moments of the entire mission. It was Orion’s protective heat shield on the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022. damaged unexpectedly After returning to Earth. The heat shield was made of AVCOAT—a material designed to slowly dissipate and protect the crew from temperatures approaching 5,000 degrees as they penetrated the Earth’s atmosphere—but the shield was charred and cracked in places, which shouldn’t have happened.
If the humans were on the Artemis I, they still would be returned safely– NASA said. The agency conducted an extensive investigation into how the heat shield was damaged in the first place. However, the heat shield remains top of mind because people all over the world are hoping to see these four astronauts return safely.
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The crew left Earth on April 1, and the astronauts quickly encountered some of the usual mishaps, including Problems with Microsoft Office and theirs toilet. But those first moments were easily overshadowed by the wonder of the images and data the crew sent back from the moon. You can already see new photos From the lunar flight on the dark side of the moon.
Astronauts too new craters were namedIncluding one named after Carroll, the late wife of mission commander Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46.
The crew could also witness a total solar eclipse from only a few thousand miles from the moon, a unique point of view no astronaut had ever experienced before.
“This wasn’t just an eclipse where the Sun was hiding behind the Moon,” said Koch, the crew’s mission specialist. he explained. “We could also see the earth’s light, the Sun’s light reflecting off the Earth, enveloping the Moon in a soft, borrowed glow.”
The rest of the live stream is streaming here.
