Overview
- NASA targets a Friday 8:07 p.m. ET splashdown off San Diego, with recovery crews on the USS John P. Murtha ready to retrieve the capsule and fly the astronauts to the ship for medical checks.
- Orion must hit a narrow entry angle at about 24,000–25,000 mph as the heat shield faces roughly 5,000°F, with a brief radio blackout before drogue and main parachutes slow the capsule for landing.
- Engineers changed the descent profile after the uncrewed Artemis I showed more scorching than expected on the Avcoat heat shield, and teams will inspect the shield soon after recovery.
- Mission control skipped a planned manual piloting demo to run thruster tests that help characterize a known helium leak in the European Service Module’s propulsion plumbing, an issue NASA says must be fixed before Artemis IV.
- The flight set a new human distance record at about 252,756 miles from Earth and carried time‑resolved radiation and biology studies—crew dosimeters, upgraded heavy‑ion detectors, organ‑on‑chip payloads, and biomarker sampling—that will guide longer lunar stays and future Mars planning.