NASA’s Artemis II mission is nearing its final stage, with the Orion spacecraft set for a high-speed return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.The splashdown is a critical moment for the mission, testing systems that the space agency plans to use in future crewed moon landings, including Artemis III.Recommended Stories list of 2 itemsend of list“To every engineer, every technician that’s touched this machine — tomorrow belongs to you,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, during a mission update briefing on Thursday. “The crew has done their part. Now we have to do ours.”Over the course of their mission, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, together with Canada’s Jeremy Hansen, pushed beyond any previous human distance from Earth during their journey around the Moon.Here’s what to know about when the splashdown will happen, where the spacecraft is expected to land and how it works.When is the Artemis II splashdown?NASA says the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, will make its return to Earth on April 11 at about 00:07 GMT (8:07pm ET on April 10), when it re-enters the atmosphere and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the San Diego coast, the final and most critical stage of the Artemis II mission.Recovery teams will retrieve the crew by helicopter and transfer them to the USS John P Murtha, the amphibious ship leading the operation.NASA has set strict “go” conditions for splashdown, including wave heights below six feet (1.8 metres), winds under 28.7mph (46 km/h), and no rain or lightning within a 30-nautical-mile radius. Clear visibility is also essential for …
