Artemis II astronauts are preparing for a splashdown in the Pacific on Friday at 8:07 pm EDT/1:07 am BST, concluding humanity’s first lunar voyage in over 50 years.
All eyes are on the capsule’s heat shield, which has to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. The crew is set to land in the ocean off the coast of San Diego.
The four-person crew, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, is projected to hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s.
The mission, which launched from Florida on April 1, successfully navigated NASA’s long-awaited lunar comeback, laying the groundwork for establishing a sustainable moon base and inspiring global attention.
Despite not landing on the moon, Artemis II broke Apollo 13’s distance record, traveling 252,756 miles from Earth, and the crew captured unprecedented views of the lunar far side and experienced a total solar eclipse. Coverage of the crew’s splashdown begins at 6:30 pm EDT/11:30 pm BST on Nasa’s YouTube channel.
