CAPE CANAVERAL.– After completing a historic detour around the far side of the Moon, the four astronauts of the NASA Artemis II mission face now the final leg of your journey back to Earth.
The crew—made up of Americans Reid WisemanVictor Glover, Christina Koch and the Canadian Jeremy Hansen— is now preparing for the return to Earth, with a planned splashdown off the coast of California this Friday afternoonlocal time. In Argentina, the re-entry process will begin at 8:53 p.m.
The arrival in the Pacific will mark the closing of a nearly ten-day journey that has already gone down in the history books: the crew members They became the humans who traveled the furthest in space exploration. Last Monday, the spacecraft far surpassed the record that the Apollo 13 mission had held for more than half a century.
But the most critical moment is still ahead. Reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere is the highest risk phasewhen the Orion capsule transforms into a fireball due to extreme friction with atmospheric gases.
According to navigation calculations, the ship will reach a speed of 38,365 kilometers per hour before parachute deployment. In this section the heat shielda key piece for the survival of the crew: There are no escape systems or contingency plans once the descent has begun.. The mission’s pilot, Victor Glover, admitted that the intensity of this stage has been a constant concern since they were assigned to the flight in April 2023.
Added to this tension is a technical controversy that has persisted since the Artemis I unmanned mission. On that occasion, the shield material—known as Avcoat—suffered. unexpected landslides that left craters on its surface.
For months, those images were not made public. Only in May 2024 did an inspector general report reveal significant damage, with large material shortages. Although NASA maintains that the system is safe, some independent specialists warn that it could be a design flaw not yet fully understood.
Former astronaut Charlie Camarda, an expert in thermal protection systems, pointed out that the agency is still unable to precisely explain the physics behind these fractures, which — in his view — increases the risk of return.
NASA, however, defends its strategy. Its managers assure that simulations and safety margins guarantee ship integrity. As an additional measure, the engineers designed a steeper descent pathintended to reduce the time of exposure to extreme heat.
That decision also generates debate. Critics such as Dan Rasky compare it to driving on a highway with a tire that loses fragments, while Danny Olivas – another former astronaut involved in the reviews – maintains that current models, although conservative, indicate that the internal structure of carbon fiber and titanium would resist even the loss of blocks of insulating material.
Beyond the technical doubts, Artemis II is a central piece in the United States’ strategy to regain prominence in deep space against the advance of China. The program aims to establish a sustained presence on the Moon through the future construction of an operational base in the next decade.
In this context, the data collected by the crew—from direct observation of the lunar surface—provides a level of detail higher than that of previous missions, which opens up new lines of research on the formation of the solar system.
The program logic responds to a chained sequence: each mission enables the next. Thus, the Artemis II maneuvers will serve as base for Artemis IIIwhich will include a complex docking operation in low orbit with the lunar landing modules.
According to NASA’s schedule, the goal is to carry out in 2028 the first manned descent to the Moon since the end of the Apollo era, in 1972. That milestone, in turn, will function as a prelude to a greater challenge: the eventual trip to Marsconceived as the culmination of this multimillion-dollar program.
Reuters Agency and The New York Times
