After a nearly 10-day journey that took the Artemis II astronauts around the moon, in front of an eclipse and farther away from Earth than any humans before them, the NASA mission is about to make a dramatic return home.
The crew's Orion space capsule is set to enter the atmosphere at 7:53 p.m. ET and splash down less than a quarter-hour later, at 8:07 p.m., off the coast of San Diego.
In that short time, the space capsule will have to slow down from nearly 25,000 miles per hour — or more than 30 times the speed of sound — to a gentle 20 or so mph before dropping into the Pacific Ocean.
As it punches though Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft will likely experience temperatures around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
And for about six minutes during reentry, as plasma builds up around the vehicle, the capsule's communications will be cut off.
The journey to Earth is like "riding a fireball through the atmosphere," NASA astronaut and Artemis II crew member Victor Glover said before the maneuver.
But, he said, it's also a necessary one.
"We have to get back," Glover said. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us."
Glover, along with fellow NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, took photos and made observations of the moon as they passed over its surface April 6. The crew will be bringing that data and more back to the team on the ground — data that may offer crucial insights ahead of the Artemis III mission, set to launch as early as next year.
Nell Greenfieldboyce and Central Florida Public Media's Brendan Byrne contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 NPR