Artemis II splashdown timeline
Artemis II splashed down off San Diego at about 8:07 p.m. ET after its crewed lunar mission, and the return featured emotional reunions and public thanks from crewmembers. Reentry involved extremely high stress on the capsule — the Orion hit the atmosphere at roughly Mach 33 (about 25,000 mph), faced temperatures near 5,000°F, and endured a roughly six‑minute radio blackout during descent. (x.com) (Media Briefing)
Artemis II ended Friday with Orion splashing down in the Pacific at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time, bringing four astronauts home from a crewed lunar flight. (nasa.gov) NASA said commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen returned after a nearly 10-day mission that launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. Eastern. (nasa.gov) The final descent was the hardest part of the trip. Orion hit Earth’s atmosphere at about 24,000 miles per hour, faced temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and went through a communications blackout that lasted about six minutes. (space.com, cbsnews.com) A lunar return comes in faster than a low-Earth-orbit landing because the spacecraft is falling back from much farther away. NASA described the reentry, parachute deployment, splashdown, and recovery as the last steps in the agency’s first astronaut mission around the moon since Apollo. (space.com, nasa.gov) The mission also set a new distance mark for human spaceflight. NASA said the crew reached 252,756 miles from Earth at its farthest point, passing the Apollo 13 record set in 1970. (nasa.gov, nasa.gov) After splashdown, NASA and U.S. military teams pulled the crew from the capsule in open water and flew them by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checks. NASA said the astronauts were then set to continue on to Johnson Space Center in Houston on April 11. (nasa.gov, nasa.gov) Artemis II was the first time astronauts flew NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft together. NASA said the flight was a test mission meant to prove the hardware and procedures before Artemis III, the mission the agency is preparing to use for a return to the lunar surface. (nasa.gov) By the time Orion was powered down in the Pacific, the crew had flown 694,481 miles in total. The mission closed with the same basic image NASA had planned for months: a capsule in the water off San Diego, Navy recovery crews alongside it, and the first moon voyagers in more than half a century back on Earth. (nasa.gov, navy.mil)
