Artemis II: Day Nine

Preparing to Come Home.

The mission is nearly over; the Orion capsule Integrity is approaching Earth and the encounter with the atmosphere that will slow it down and hopefully bring the crew safely back to the surface.

Given the issues that were discovered after the reentry of Artemis I, this mission was delayed substantially and a new reentry trajectory was planned. The decision was taken not to change the heat shield, as this would delay the mission even further. A modified heat shield will fly on Artemis III, and NASA believes Artemis II can still be successful with the older design if it flies a different trajectory.

Before I get on to that, one last update on the trajectory of Integrity as it accelerates towards Earth:

During the mission NASA have been publishing updated ephemris data - the position and velocity of the spacecraft at each point in time - as corrective burns and the lunar gravity have altered it.

These changes are very small, and I chose not to show them on the main trajectory plot and just use the latest one, as the differences would be substantially less than the with of the line. Even zooming in on the entry interface portion at Earth, it looks as if the initial trans-lunar burn was very good.