Four NASA astronauts are on their final approach to Earth after looping around the Moon, with the Artemis II Orion capsule set to splash down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on Friday evening. If all goes as planned, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will become the first humans to return from deep space since the Apollo 17 crew came home in December 1972.
NASA is targeting a splashdown time of 8:07 p.m. Eastern (5:07 p.m. Pacific) on April 10, 2026, according to the agency’s Flight Day 8 status update. The crew spent the day running guidance, navigation and control checks as Orion hurtles back toward Earth on a free-return trajectory from the Moon. Recovery teams aboard U.S. Navy and NASA vessels are already positioned off the Southern California coast, ready to secure the capsule and assist the astronauts after initial medical evaluations.
NASA will carry the event live. The agency’s streaming platform lists an official broadcast window covering atmospheric re-entry through crew extraction, with onboard cameras, mission commentary and recovery-ship footage all part of the coverage plan.
Secondary payloads along for the ride
The crew is not the only payload making history. Stowed inside the Orion Stage Adapter, a structural ring connecting the capsule to the Space Launch System rocket’s upper stage, are multiple small satellites that launched as secondary payloads. According to NASA’s Artemis II press kit, those CubeSats were deployed roughly five hours after liftoff, once the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage completed its disposal burn. An onboard avionics unit commanded each satellite’s release in sequence, accommodating standard 6U and 12U form factors.
NASA has not published a complete, itemized manifest of every CubeSat aboard Artemis II in the documents reviewed for this article. Among the university labs capable of supplying such hardware is the University of Georgia’s Small Satellite Research Laboratory (SSRL), which designs and builds CubeSats for scientific and technology-demonstration flights. The student-run lab has previously deployed satellites into low Earth orbit and has developed flight-qualified bus designs, power systems and communications hardware. However, no available NASA or UGA source reviewed for this article confirms that a specific SSRL-built satellite is manifested on Artemis II. The lab’s capabilities are consistent with the requirements for deep-space rideshare selection, but the connection to this particular mission cannot be stated as verified fact based on current evidence.
What the mission means for Artemis
Artemis II is the crewed follow-up to Artemis I, the uncrewed test flight that sent an empty Orion capsule around the Moon in late 2022 to prove the spacecraft and SLS rocket could survive the journey. This time, four people are aboard, and the mission is designed to validate every life-support, navigation and communication system that future crews will depend on when NASA attempts a crewed lunar landing on Artemis III.
The 10-day flight has already produced milestones. The crew traveled farther from Earth than any humans since Apollo, passed behind the far side of the Moon and tested Orion’s deep-space communication links through NASA’s Deep Space Network. Public commentary from the astronauts during the mission focused on those human firsts: the view of the lunar far side, daily life inside the capsule and what it feels like to leave Earth’s neighborhood for the first time in a generation.
For the secondary payloads, the real work begins after splashdown. Mission teams will analyze telemetry and ground-contact data from the deployed CubeSats over the coming weeks, and those results will help shape how NASA allocates rideshare slots on future SLS flights. If university-built hardware performs well in the deep-space radiation and thermal environment, it strengthens the case for expanding academic access on Artemis III and beyond.
What to watch Friday evening
As Orion streaks into the atmosphere at roughly 25,000 miles per hour, generating temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its heat shield, the next few hours will answer the mission’s final open question: whether the capsule’s thermal protection system performs as well with a crew aboard as it did during the uncrewed test. NASA has not publicly detailed backup splashdown zones or weather-contingency windows for Friday, though the agency typically builds alternate sites and timing into crewed recovery plans.
For real-time updates, NASA’s central Artemis II hub aggregates mission blogs, live coverage links and advisories on any timing or location changes. That page will be updated before secondary outlets can adjust their own reporting, making it the most reliable source as the capsule descends and recovery crews move into position off the California coast.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
