The Artemis II astronauts are scheduled to complete their lunar flyby and return to Earth at 5:07 p.m. Friday afternoon, splashing down near a Navy amphibious ship around 100 miles off San Diego.
The final portion of the mission will last a harrowing 14 minutes before the Orion capsule with its four astronauts lands in the Pacific Ocean under three giant parachutes.
You can watch the landing live on the free NASA+ streaming service as well as Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Netflix, HBO Max, Discovery+, Peacock and Roku with coverage beginning at 3:30 p.m. Many broadcast and cable networks will also have live coverage.
If you’d like to join other space enthusiasts, the San Diego Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park has scheduled a watch party from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Pavilion of Flight.
And there’s a chance the re-entry will be visible from the coast. “Watch west over the ocean around the expected time, and if conditions cooperate, you may catch a brief, bright streak as Orion comes in,” said Aaron J. Rosengren, an assistant professor mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San Diego.
NASA map shows the re-entry path of Artemis II on Friday.Preparations for Artemis II’s return begin about five hours before splashdown, according to the NASA timetable, when the spacecraft’s rockets make a final course correction. Then at 4:53 p.m., and traveling 24,000 miles per hour, the capsule will first encounter the atmosphere nearly 76 miles up.
Friction on the heat shield will quickly raise the outside temperature to around 3,000 degrees and surround the craft with superheated plasma, temporarily cutting off radio communications. After the spacecraft slows, a series of parachutes will unfurl, with Orion finally dropping into the ocean at just 17 miles per hour.
Once in the water, five orange airbags will inflate around the top of the spacecraft and flip the capsule into an upright position.
MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopters from the nearby amphibious transport dock ship USS John P. Murtha will be monitoring the landing. Crews from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23 at North Island and divers from Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 1 in San Diego will help the astronauts exit the capsule and then fly them to the ship.
Navy personnel aboard the USS John P. Murtha practice recovering a mockup of the Orion capsule in January. (Photo courtesy of the Navy)The divers will then tow the Orion capsule into the landing ship’s cavernous well deck.
Aboard the Murtha, the astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — will be checked by doctors in the medical bay.
After being brought to North Island, the crew will board a plane for a flight to Houston.
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