ARTEMIS II astronauts will return home tonight after their record-smashing NASA Moon mission.
The four daring astronauts lifted off from Kennedy Space Center ten days ago on a journey to pave the way for a permanent base on Earth’s closest neighbour.
Now their Orion spacecraft, known as Integrity, is poised to splash down under parachutes off the coast of California.
The finale to the celebrated mission is set to begin with the separation of Orion’s crew capsule from its service module.
Travelling at an astounding 25,000mph — seven miles a second — their 15ft-by-9ft capsule will catapult back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
This will be followed by a tense six-minute communication blackout before the capsule parachutes into the sea.
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If all goes well, US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will be bobbing safely in the ocean shortly after 8pm ET.
Although the crew did not land on the lunar surface, they travelled farther from Earth than any other human in history.
Reaching a whopping 252,756 miles, Artemis II broke the previous record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 – which travelled 248,655 miles from Earth.
The Orion spacecraft left the Moon’s “sphere of influence” – the area where the Moon’s gravitational pull is stronger than Earth‘s – on Tuesday.
The crew briefly lost contact and were left completely alone for nearly an hour.
Watch The Sun’s livestream of the Artemis II mission here
In their final words before the unavoidable blackout, pilot Victor Glover said: “To all of you down there, we love you from the Moon.”
The crew revealed a newly-discovered lunar crater would be named after Commander Wiseman’s wife Carroll, who died of cancer, aged 46, in 2020.
A second will be named Integrity, their capsule’s nickname.
In another record breaking feat, astronauts snapped the first ever pictures of Earth from the mysterious far side of the moon.
The pic was shared by the White House on social media, saying: “Humanity, from the other side. First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon.”
Another new snap also shows a solar eclipse from space showing “totality, beyond Earth”.
“From lunar orbit, the Moon eclipses the Sun, revealing a view few in human history have ever witnessed,” the White House X account added.
Key moments from the historic Artemis II mission
After a 10-day lunar mission that has reignited global interest in space exploration, the astronauts of Artemis II will return home tonight. Here are some of the key moments from their record-breaking mission.
- Artemis II thundered out of the Earth’s orbit on April 1.
- The four astronauts travelled further from earth than any human in history, smashing the previous record set by the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.
- The crew experienced a communication blackout which lasted almost an hour after setting their distance record and passing across the far side of the moon.
- The first ever pictures of earth as seen from the mysterious far side of the moon were taken.
- New craters were discovered on the lunar surface, which have now been named by astronauts.
- A fault put the spacecraft’s £17.4 million toilet out of action for six hours.
- Artemis II left the Moon’s “sphere of influence” on Tuesday to begin their journey home.
But the high-stakes mission has not been without tense moments.
Engineers ran into issues on launch day, facing two technical scares and a one-hour delay before liftoff.
A faulty loo also meant crew could not boldly go for six hours after a blinking light alert put the £17.4million toilet out of action.
Hansen, 50, revealed the “tense” moment in the crew’s first live interview from space.
He said: “We did get a warning message for ‘cabin leak suspected’”.
Cabin leaks can be deadly – they could lead to the structure of the spacecraft being compromised, risking exposing the crew to space’s powerful vacuum.
Fortunately, the crew investigated and found the alert was a mistake, and onboard cabin pressure remained at normal levels.
Artemis II’s crew must now face their most dangerous stage of the mission yet.
There is one essential element that is being watched closely – the heat shield, a special coating applied on the bottom of the Orion capsule to protect astronauts from the 2800C temperatures on re-entry.
During a test flight on the first uncrewed Artemis mission in 2022, the heat shield cracked and chunks came off.
The spacecraft was still able to return to Earth intact and a subsequent investigation found that people would have been safe, so Nasa bosses decided it could still be used for the Artemis II mission.
Instead, experts have made some alterations to the flight path.
The recalibrated descent path has narrowed the size of the potential splashdown zone, limiting target landing options in case of poor weather at sea.
NASA officials said on Thursday that forecasts looked favourable.
Speaking on Tuesday, Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman said: “In terms of what keeps me up at night, my blood pressure will be elevated until they’re under parachutes in the water off the West Coast.
“There’s no plan B there. That is the thermal protection system. The heat shield has to work.”
Just as critical are several other factors, including achieving the spacecraft’s precise descent path and re-entry angle through a series of critical blasts of its jet guidance thrusters.
Once the capsule hits the top of the atmosphere, it takes less than 15 minutes, for the parachutes to be deployed and the capsule floats into the sea.
NASA says it will take about another hour for recovery teams to secure Orion, hoist it onto a ship and assist the astronauts in exiting the capsule one by one.
The huge mission follows nearly three years of training for the group, who are the first selection of astronauts to fly in Nasa’s Artemis program.
Nasa is already preparing its next Artemis mission for 2027 which will be another crewed test.
After that it’s the most talked about Artemis IV mission in 2028, where astronauts will walk on the Moon.