The four astronauts of Artemis II, who have circled the moon and traveled farther in space than any human in history, will finish their epic 10-day voyage on April 10 with a risky high-speed reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, including reaching temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The crew’s Orion capsule, which they’ve named Integrity, will splash down off the San Diego coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT.
The USS John P. Murtha (LPD-26), an amphibious transport dock ship, will recover astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, at sea.
But to reach the Pacific, the capsule must first execute a high-altitude maneuver called a “skip-entry” trajectory to reduce speed as it hits the atmosphere at roughly 25,000 mph.
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