Artemis astronauts prepare for fiery re-entry to end Moon mission

With Earth drawing closer and a fiery homecoming ahead, the four astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission reflected on a voyage unlike any before it, describing the strain, wonder and emotion of preparing to plunge back through the atmosphere during their first press conference from space.

The Artemis II crew have been travelling in their Orion capsule since lifting off from Florida last week, and are scheduled to splash down off the southern California coast tomorrow after reaching the Moon earlier this week.

Their route carried them beyond the Moon’s shadowed far side, making them the most distant-travelling humans ever to fly.

As they head for home, they are expected to hit speeds of up to 38,365km/h during re-entry, one of the most dangerous stretches of the mission and a crucial trial for Orion’s heatshield as atmospheric friction pounds the spacecraft.

The mission took the Artemis II further than any humans in history

“There are so many more pictures, so many more stories, and gosh, I haven’t even begun to process what we’ve been through. We’ve still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well.”

He and fellow NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, form the opening crewed chapter in the multibillion-dollar Artemis programme, which is intended to return humans to the Moon’s surface by 2028 ahead of China and lay the groundwork for a long-term US presence over the next decade, including a moon base that could support future missions to Mars.

Mission Specialist Koch likened the broader effort to a relay race, telling reporters: “In fact, we have batons that we bought to symbolise, physically, that.”

“We plan to hand them to the next crew, and every single thing that we do is with them in mind,” she said.

That next mission, Artemis III, is set to include a docking test in low-Earth orbit between the Orion capsule and both astronaut lunar landers that NASA intends to use to place astronauts on the Moon in later missions.

Artemis IV, targeted for 2028, would mark the programme’s first crewed lunar landing, and the first since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The Artemis programme aims to put humans on the Moon by 2028

Back on Earth, dozens of lunar scientists have spent the week crowded into rooms next to NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, jotting notes and debating a constant flow of live and recorded audio from the Artemis II crew aboard Orion.

The astronauts are due back tomorrow at about 8pm ET (1am Irish time Saturday), when they are expected to splash down off the coast of San Diego, California, bringing their nearly ten-day mission to a close.

On Monday, the crew reached a record-setting distance from Earth of about 405,554km, beating by some 6,437km the mark held by the Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.

Commander Wiseman said each astronaut had two “very brief” conversations with family members during the flight.

(Clockwise from left) Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover

“Hearing your crew mates giggling and crying, and just gasping and listening and loving their families from afar — family is so important to all four of us, and that has been amazing,” he said.

In a radio message to mission control in Houston on Monday, as the crew neared their closest pass to the lunar surface, Colonel Hansen proposed naming a newly formed crater on the Moon after Cmdr Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

Cmdr Wiseman said his crewmates first raised the idea of naming the crater Carroll while they were in quarantine before launch.

“That was an emotional moment for me,” he said. “I said ‘Absolutely, I would love that’ … but I can’t give the speech. I can’t give the talk.”

The astronauts set their distance record during the lunar flyby, when they examined the Moon’s surface from roughly 6,437km above it.

Progress in lunar science has usually depended on orbiting satellites and observations made from Earth.

But during the crew’s six-hour lunar flyby, scientists received a real-time stream of observations from human eyes, creating a rare chance for direct exchanges between teams on the ground and fellow researchers more than 405,554km away in deep space.

Researchers view NASA’s Artemis II mission as a significant early move in probing mysteries surrounding the formation of the solar system. Before launch last week, Artemis II Mission Specialist Koch described the Moon as a “witness plate” to the formation of our solar system.