Artemis II astronauts back home on Earth after Orion capsule splashes down off California coast

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The transport dock ship USS John P. Murtha will stay a safe distance back from the Orion at first to ensure it doesn't run into any jettisoned hardware in the water. 

Recovery divers will approach the capsule and assess the air and water surrounding it. If it's deemed safe, they will then open the hatch and help the four astronauts from their seats into a large raft called "the front porch."

Once all four astronauts are in the raft, the capsule will be towed away while the crew wait for U.S. Navy helicopters to pick them up and bring them back to the John P. Murtha. The astronauts will then have a routine medical checkup on board the ship.

The Orion capsule will be loaded onto the ship, which will then head back to the naval base in San Diego. The Artemis II crew will fly from the ship to the mainland between 12 and 24 hours after splashdown. 

After a nerve-wracking few minutes, the astronauts inside the crew capsule have splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, right on schedule at 8:07 p.m. ET. The landing brings the astronauts' mission around the moon and back to an end after 10 historic days.

The first drag chutes should slow the crew down from about 520 km/h to 160 km/h in less than a minute. Pilot and main parachutes will bring them down to 30 km/h.

Just minutes now until splashdown.

After a tense few minutes, Houston has established contact again with the crew inside the Orion. 

"Houston, Integrity, we have you loud and clear," Wiseman says. 

The next step for the crew: slowing the capsule down before it hits the Pacific Ocean.

Rhianna and Bob mentioned the hot plasma the astronauts are surrounded by right now. Why does that block communication? 

Think about it this way: if radio signals are baseballs, that plasma is an aluminum bat in the hands of a hall-of-famer. And while the superheated air deflects the signals, it also absorbs them. 

This has been a problem since the Apollo days. But, interestingly enough, the space shuttle didn't have this issue because of its shape — the plasma was thickest at the nose during re-entry, leaving the tail less affected by this heat and allowing signals to get through. 

Scientists have worked on this challenge for a while, proposing solutions like water-cooling the plasma to ceramic antennas that could withstand the heat. It's especially important as more humans plan to leave and re-enter Earth's atmosphere in the future. 

Inside the tiny capsule, the four astronauts are withstanding nearly four times the force of Earth's gravity as they hurtle toward the ocean. Intense heat and compressed air have coated the capsule in white-hot plasma, cutting off communication for the next several minutes.

Temperatures outside the vehicle, expected to hit more than 2,700 C, will be putting the heat shield to the test.

The crew can still see the lunar surface on their way back home.

"We have a great view of the moon out Window 2. Looks a little smaller than yesterday," Wiseman told Houston just now.

"Guess we'll have to go back," replied Artemis II's chief training officer Jacki Mahaffey, who is the astronauts' primary contact as capcom tonight.

The crew has completed the final raise burn to adjust the capsule's angle in order to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at the correct trajectory. The astronauts have also finished a series of roll manoeuvres to ensure the capsule doesn't collide with the discarded ESM.

The crew module has separated from the ESM, which propelled the astronauts toward the moon and kept them alive during their mission. The heat shield is now exposed for re-entry.

We've already mentioned the crew module's planned separation from the European Service Module (ESM), one of the first critical steps to this splashdown process. It also happens to be a key moment in understanding how many hands it took to put this mission together. 

The ESM, which was built by the European Space Agency and its partner, Airbus Defence and Space, has provided the crew with electricity, propulsion, temperature control, air and water for their entire journey. 

Former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says it’s a reminder of collaboration across partners to help this historic mission happen.  

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