NASA and the US Army are fine-tuning the procedure for recovering the Artemis II capsule when it returns to Earth. A major trial took place at the end of July 2023.
Organizing a manned space mission, like the second flight of the Artemis program, also means preparing for the return to Earth of its crew. This is precisely what a joint team between NASA and the Department of Defense exercised. Objective: to train to recover a space capsule in the open sea, at the end of its atmospheric re-entry, and of its odyssey hundreds of thousands of km from the blue planet.
In a progress report on August 1, 2023, the American space agency announces that a very first test for the recovery of the Artemis II capsule has been carried out, off the coast of San Diego (California). It is in this vehicle that will be Christina Koch, Gregory Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, the four members of Artemis II.
Retrieve astronauts from the open sea
This first attempt follows a series of other demonstrations at sea. It is proving to be one of the most comprehensive for exercising the procedures that NASA and US military personnel will have to follow on D-Day. This includes the approaching the capsule, securing it, opening the hatch, extracting the astronauts and transferring them to a nearby ship.
The objective, says NASA, is to achieve short delays: act to have the crew on a navy boat two hours after landing. The four astronauts were briefed on the operations prior to this test. They also met the recovery teams. They will take part in a trial in 2024, as part of their training.
The space race between the United States and the USSR has in fact led NASA to already have experience in the recovery of astronauts at sea. For example, it is in the Pacific Ocean that the Columbia spacecraft ended its journey during the Apollo 11 mission. It is a faculty that SpaceX also acquires, as part of an agreement with NASA to transport personnel to the ISS.
Artemis II is due to take place in 2024, which now gives America less than a year and a half to be ready. Aboard an Orion capsule launched by an SLS rocket, the four crew members will circumnavigate the Moon, during a trip that will last ten days. Several other missions linked to the Artemis program are planned, well beyond 2030.
It is not with Artemis II that America will return to the Moon. With this flight, it is a question of completing the qualification of the SLS rocket, which had worked extremely well during Artémis I. It is also a question of further validating the Orion capsule, this time with personnel on board. To see astronauts hopping on the Moon, you will have to wait until the end of 2025. At best.
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