THE WASHINGTON POST: The high-stakes descent of Artemis II after historic voyage around the moon

NASA’s Orion module splashed into the Pacific Ocean just after 8pm Eastern on Friday, safely delivering the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission from their record-setting journey around the moon.

The successful landing marks the conclusion of an important test for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface and eventually push deeper into the solar system.

Artemis II was the first crewed mission to utilise NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew module – demonstrating that the agency’s equipment can propel people out of Earth’s orbit and bring them safely home.

On Friday, all eyes were on the Orion module’s heat shield, which must protect the crew from blistering temperatures during their high-speed descent through the atmosphere.

On an uncrewed test flight in 2022, gas buildup within the shield caused charred fragments to break off.

For this mission, NASA opted to modify the entry maneuver that it believes led to the gas problem. The capsule’s successful splashdown off the coast of San Diego Friday night indicates that the heat shield was able to do its job amid temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Though the mission replicated many elements of the Apollo program, it still notched several milestones.

During their 10 days in space, the crew - pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and mission specialists Jeremy Hansen and Christina Koch – traveled farther from Earth than any human has before. Glover was the first Black man and Koch the first woman to leave low Earth orbit. Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, was the first non-US citizen to reach the moon.

In addition to testing the Orion module’s propulsion and life support systems, the astronauts collected scientific data on a key component of human spaceflight: themselves.

Before they launched, each crew member had a tiny chip embedded in their bone marrow, which will help scientists understand how deep space affects the body.

They also observed parts of the moon that no human has seen with their own eyes, including the cratered brown expanse of the lunar far side.

But after emerging from a 40-minute blackout period Monday evening, when the moon blocked radio transmissions between Orion and mission control, Koch said that no sight was more precious than the blue and white orb of our home planet.

“We will explore. We will build. We will build ships. We will visit again,” she said over a scratchy broadcast. “But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.”

A high-stakes descent

Reentry is one of the most intense phases of any mission, involving a carefully coordinated approach to Earth and 13-minute, stomach-churning descent to the surface.

At the peak of its free fall, Orion was traveling as fast as 34,965 feet per second, and the astronauts were subjected to forces almost four times the strength of Earth’s gravity.

“Coming back from the moon ... you’re really coming straight down,” Jeff Radigan, the mission’s lead flight director, said at a news conference Thursday. “Everything has to go right.”

The reentry process began about five hours before touchdown with a small engine burn needed fine-tune the flight path.

If the Orion module entered the atmosphere at too steep an angle, the friction of the atmosphere could create more stress than the spacecraft was able to tolerate. But if their approach was too shallow, the spacecraft could bounce off the edge of the atmosphere, like a rock skipping across the surface of a lake.

Sometimes such skips are intentional; in the 2022 Artemis I test, NASA used the maneuver to give itself more control over the spacecraft’s eventual landing site.

But dipping in and out of the atmosphere caused gases to build up inside the heat shield, leading to cracks. Charred fragments of the shield’s outer layer were ripped away, making the shield less effective.

Monitors showed that temperatures inside the Orion module remained normal, NASA said, meaning if there had been astronauts aboard, they would have been safe.

On this mission, the Artemis II adopted a more direct approach, limiting how long the heat shield was exposed to extreme temperatures.

After their flight path was finalized, the crew changed into their launch and entry suits, which provided an extra layer of protection during the descent. Next they jettisoned their service module, which provided power, water and air during journey.

As Wiseman got one of his last views of the moon before landing, he radioed down to mission control: “Looks a little smaller than yesterday.”

“Guess we’ll have to go back,” Artemis II chief training officer Jacki Mahaffey responded from the ground.

Then, roughly 400,000 feet above Earth’s surface, the spacecraft entered the atmosphere - a pivotal moment known as “entry interface.”

As the Orion module whooshed through the atmosphere, it encountered something that doesn’t exist in the airless void of space: friction. That force began to slow the spacecraft and turn its kinetic energy into heat.

Just 24 seconds after entry, the air around the craft became so hot it turned to plasma - an electrically conductive superheated gas. Radio waves can’t travel through this material, leaving the astronauts completely cut off from the outside world.

All anyone could see of Orion was a pinprick of light captured on camera by aircraft near the landing site.

For six minutes, the entire Earth waited for the Artemis II crew to emerge from their silence.

“Integrity, Houston, comms check post-blackout,” Mahaffey said from Mission Control.

There was half a breath of silence, then -

“Houston, Integrity, we have you loud and clear,” Wiseman responded.

At a viewing room at Johnson Space Center, onlookers broke into cheers.

Next a series of parachutes deployed, gradually slowing Orion to a safe landing speed. Just before splashing into the Pacific, the spacecraft was drifting at a leisurely 20 miles per hour, gleaming against the brilliant blue California sky.

Finally, came the words everyone was waiting for: “Houston, Integrity. Splashdown.”

Next steps

Off the coast of San Diego, the USS John P. Murtha is positioned to retrieve the astronauts from their landing site. Once the spacecraft has powered down, divers will open the hatch and help the astronauts onto an inflatable raft, where helicopters can pick them up and bring them to the ship.

Though Friday’s splashdown marks the end of the Artemis II crew’s voyage, it is not the end of the mission. As soon as the astronauts are safe, the recovery team will tow the Orion module to the well deck of their ship, and NASA engineers will set about trying to understand exactly how it functioned in flight.

Their to-do list includes figuring out several technical problems that cropped up during the 10-day voyage, the most significant of which was a valve leak inside the service module’s propulsion system.

At a news conference Thursday night, NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said that the leak did not pose a safety problem during this mission, but would have to be resolved before future missions that will orbit the moon.

The next step of the Artemis program, scheduled for 2027, will send astronauts to low-earth orbit, where they will test orbital docking maneuvers with a commercially-made lunar lander. And in 2028, two Artemis IV astronauts are scheduled to take humanity’s first steps onto the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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