Watch Artemis II astronauts hurtle home from moon towards splashdown

The four Artemis II astronauts, returning from the ⁠world’s first crewed moon voyage in over half a century, hurtled back towards Earth on Friday as they prepared their Orion spacecraft for the final phase of their descent and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California.On Friday afternoon, the autonomously piloted Orion crew capsule executed one last eight-second firing of its jet thrusters to fine-tune the flight course, a critical manoeuvre to ensure a safe return after a nearly 10-day mission.Roughly 20 minutes before entering Earth’s atmosphere, the gumdrop-shaped Orion vehicle jettisoned its service module housing its main rocket engines, exposing ‌the capsule’s heat shield that will face temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) through a fiery atmospheric re-entry.Blazing-hot plasma enveloping the capsule will trigger an expected six-minute communications blackout.The atmospheric friction and a set of parachutes are expected to slow the capsule from 32 times the speed of sound to a soft 17 mph (27km/h) at splashdown a few hundred kilometres off the San Diego coast.The Artemis II crew module separates from its service module as it prepares for re-entry to Earth on Friday. Photo: NASA via ReutersIf all goes well, US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will end up bobbing safely in the ocean aboard their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, shortly after 8pm.