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last mo.

Artemis II Aims for Pacific Splashdown After High-Heat Reentry Tonight

The descent will test Orion’s steeper return profile adopted in response to heat‑shield damage seen on Artemis I.

The NASA Artemis II crew, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover, pose for a group photo inside the Orion spacecraft on their way home following a flyby of the far side of the Moon on April 6, 2026. NASA/Handout via REUTERS
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A crescent Earth setting along the Moon's limb, as seen from the Orion spacecraft on April 6, 2026. The edge of the visible surface of the Moon is called the "lunar limb."
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Overview

  • Orion, which is targeting an 8:07 p.m. ET splashdown Friday off San Diego, will be met by U.S. Navy teams aboard the USS John P. Murtha for crew pickup and capsule recovery.
  • The return sequence calls for service‑module separation, a brief communications blackout during peak heating near 25,000 mph, and a drogue‑to‑main parachute deployment that slows the capsule for ocean landing.
  • NASA changed the reentry from a prior ‘skip’ to a steeper path after Artemis I shed AVCOAT heat‑shield chunks, and engineers plan prompt post‑landing inspections to assess how the shield performed with crew aboard.
  • The 10‑day flight took Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen around the far side of the Moon to a record ~252,756 miles from Earth, with thousands of images sent back using Orion’s laser communications system.
  • Mission managers prioritized science and vehicle data, flying crew‑worn dosimeters, upgraded DLR radiation detectors, and organ‑chip studies, and they skipped a manual piloting demo to characterize an internal helium leak that NASA says must be fixed before Artemis IV.