Friday 10/April/2026 – 08:35 PM
Complete the four astronauts on board a spacecraft Orion Their mission around the moon is expected to land off the coast of San Diego at 20:07 EST today, Friday, or 01:07 British Summer Time tomorrow, Saturday.
The Artemis 2 crew prepares to return from the Moon to Earth
According to what was published by the BBC, the water landing process, which begins with the separation of the European Service Module, takes about 42 minutes to complete, and the re-entry process and subsequent landing in the ocean is considered the most dangerous part of the Artemis 2 mission, as the Orion capsule endures temperatures of approximately 2760 degrees Celsius, which is equivalent to approximately half the temperature of the sun.
The crew member is scheduled to enter the atmosphere at 5:53 PM Mountain time, just southeast of Hawaii, and about 13 minutes later, it is expected to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
Lockheed Martin’s Space Unit is the main contractor for the Orion spacecraft carrying astronauts. The vehicle was designed at the company’s headquarters in Colorado, and some of its components were also manufactured there, such as the massive heat shield, which suffers from some defects. NASA mission planners and the Artemis 2 team worked to find a way to mitigate this risk.
Instead of jumping through the atmosphere as in the Artemis 1 mission, this mission will enter the atmosphere more sharply and quickly, limiting the time the spacecraft spends in those fiery, energy-packed moments during re-entry. To arrive, the spacecraft will first have to penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 25,000 miles per hour and be exposed to temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
