Overview
- NASA’s splashdown target, set for Friday at 8:07 p.m. ET off San Diego, comes with live coverage starting at 6:30 p.m. ET on NASA+ and YouTube.
- Orion will strike the atmosphere at about 24,000 to 25,000 mph and heat to roughly 5,000°F, with a planned 13 to 16 minute communications blackout caused by ionized plasma.
- U.S. Navy divers and a four-member dive medical team will open the capsule, triage the crew, move them to a raft, and fly them by HSC-23 helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for checks.
- The four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—are completing a 10-day lunar flyby that carried humans farther from Earth than ever before.
- NASA refined the entry angle and reanalyzed heat-shield tiles after Artemis I showed unexpected charring, and mission leaders say the crewed return profile addresses those risks.