Update for December 11, 12:50 p.m. ET: from NASA The Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft crashed successfully today, Dec. 11, and appears to be in good shape as recovery teams work to recover the spacecraft. NASA will wait approximately 2 hours to retrieve Orion from the ocean as part of a post-landing temperature test. Read our full story.
NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will return to Earth on Sunday (December 11) after nearly a month in space, and you can watch the return live.
Artemis 1is unmanned Orion The capsule is expected to crash into the Pacific Ocean off Baja California on Sunday around 12:40 p.m. EST (1740 GMT).
You can watch live coverage of Orion’s reentry here on Space.com courtesy of NASA, or directly through the space agency (opens in a new tab). Coverage will begin at 11:00 a.m. EST (4:00 p.m. GMT).
In picture : Launch of Artemis 1: a breathtaking view of the beginnings of NASA’s moon rocket
After: NASA’s Artemis 1 Lunar Mission: Live Updates
Orion launched atop a Space Launch System (SLS) on November 16, kicking off the highly anticipated Artemis 1 mission.
The capsule slipped into lunar orbit on November 25, then left on December 1. Four days later, Orion ignited its main engine in a 3.5-minute burn – his longest of the mission – during a close lunar flyby to return to his home planet.
The 25.5-day Artemis 1 mission will end on Sunday, 50 years to the day Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt land on the lunar surface. The duo left on December 14, 1972 and no humans returned the moon since.
If all goes as planned, Orion will strike earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean around 12:20 p.m. EST (1720 GMT) Sunday while traveling at 25,000 mph (40,000 kph). This phenomenal speed will generate a lot of friction; Orion’s heat shield will have to withstand temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius), about half the temperature of the surface of the sun.
The capsule will briefly bounce off the upper atmosphere, then drop back down, like a boulder skipping across the surface of a pond. After this jump, Orion will descend through the atmosphere by parachute, splashing down off the coast of Baja California around 12:40 p.m. EST (1740 GMT). A US Navy ship, the USS Portland, will be waiting nearby to pick up the spacecraft and transport it to the Port of San Diego.
Re-entry will begin over the open Pacific, away from the shores of South America, and Orion will head north from there. The remoteness of the capsule’s path, combined with the timing – that is, during daylight hours – makes this re-entry a very difficult target for observers on the ground, even those close to the dump site.
“Is anyone going to be able to see this off Baja?” Judd Frieling, Artemis 1 Flight Director, said at a press conference Thursday, December 8. “There’s always a chance, but we’re quite a distance from the coast there, so I doubt it – unless you’re out there in a boat, about 100 miles offshore.”
However, nearby observers may obtain auditory evidence that re-entry has begun.
“You’re more likely to hear the sonic boom as the vehicle approaches than anything else,” Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin said during Thursday’s briefing.
Artemis 1 is a tune-up cruise for the SLS, Orion and their associated ground systems. If all goes well on Sunday, NASA can start preparing for Artemis 2which will send astronauts around the moon in 2024.
Artemis 3 is scheduled to land boots near the lunar south pole in 2025 or 2026. Future NASA missions Artemis program will build a research base in this region, which is thought to be rich in water ice.
The agency wants this outpost to be operational by the end of the 2020s. NASA plans to use the knowledge gained from these lunar efforts to help astronauts March in the late 2030s or early 2040s.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low (opens in a new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) Where Facebook (opens in a new tab).