How to watch NASA’s Artemis II land on Earth

NASA’s Artemis II crew of four astronauts from the United States and Canada is due to return to Earth on Friday after their first trip to the surface of the moon.

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen spent 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft. It is expected to begin re-entry at 7:33 pm ET and erupt at 8:07 pm.

NASA has a live feed when the crew arrives in the Pacific Ocean later today. The Orion spacecraft is scheduled to fly off the coast of San Diego, California.

The Artemis II mission is the first time humans have orbited the moon in more than 50 years. The crew traveled farther from Earth than humans have ever done before, reaching a distance of approximately 252,760 kilometers from Earth. This is the distance equivalent to walking between New York City and Los Angeles about 100 times. 330 cubic feet living space, which is about the size of two minivans.

The purpose of the Artemis II mission is to collect data and information that will help NASA plan future missions and landings on the moon – the astronauts put the Orion spacecraft through. preparatory tests to evaluate how it works with astronauts. This includes testing communication methods with Earth partners, making traffic adjustments, and creating safe re-entry and flooding.

An explosion can be one of the most dangerous moments of the entire job. On the Artemis I mission in 2022, which was unmanned, Orion’s heat shield was unexpected damage returning to Earth. The heat shield is made of AVCOAT – a material designed to slowly degrade and protect the crew from temperatures approaching 5,000 degrees when entering the Earth’s atmosphere – but the shield burned and broke in place, which should not have happened.

If the people had been on Artemis I’s ship, they would have stayed he returned safelyNASA said. The agency has also done extensive research into how the heat shield was damaged in the first place. However, the heat protection remains above the mind while people all over the world hope to see these four astronauts return safely.

The crew left Earth on April 1, and the astronauts faced some challenges, including problems with Microsoft Office and theirs toilet. But these early moments were easily overshadowed by the amazing images and information that crews sent back from the moon. You can already see it new pictures from the moon fly to the dark side of the moon.

Astronauts too he called the new cratersincluding one named after Carroll’s wife, who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46.

The workers were also able to testify a total eclipse from a distance of only a few thousand miles from the moon, a the highest level which none of the ship had seen before.

“It wasn’t just an eclipse where the Sun was hidden behind the Moon,” Koch, the crew’s mission specialist, said. he explained. We could also see the light of the earth, the light of the Sun shining on the Earth, covering the Moon in a soft and borrowed light.

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