Artemis II astronauts are halfway home, NASA all set for April 11 splashdown

The astronauts have begun preparations for the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean which is scheduled 6:37 am IST off the coast of California.

The astronauts of the Artemis II mission have crossed the halfway mark on their return journey from the Moon, NASA announced on Friday. According to the Orion live tracker, the spacecraft is approximately 113,000 km from Earth at the time of publishing and it's travelling at 5,621 km per hour.

Artemis II includes mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Among the crew members, Canadian national Hansen is the only non-American and the first from his country to launch on a Moon mission.

The astronauts have already begun preparations for the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean which is scheduled on April 11. The splashdown will occur at 6:37 am IST off the coast of San Diego, California, marking an end to the mission that launched on April 2.

On its ninth day, the Orion spacecraft conducted the second return trajectory correction burn after April 7 to fine tune its path to Earth. The final correction burn, according to mission control at Johnson Space Center, Houston, will be conducted five hours before Orion's reentry into Earth.

The reentry will subject the Orion spacecraft to temperatures up to 2,760 degrees Celsius when it slams into Earth's atmosphere at approximately 38,367 km per hour. The entire reentry sequence will last a few minutes before Orion deploys its 11 parachutes at different altitudes to reduce its velocity to less than 30 km per hour for a splashdown.

You can watch the reentry live when NASA begins the coverage on its YouTube and X profile at 4 am. The event will also be livestreamed on NASA+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Netflix, HBO Max, Discovery+ and Peacock.