Orion

When a spacecraft returns from the Moon, it strikes Earth’s atmosphere at around 25,000 miles per hour. The air in front of it compresses into a glowing plasma sheath hotter than molten lava, and the vehicle effectively becomes a fireball for several minutes. A reasonable question follows - why not just slow down first? Why not fire engines to drop down to something more manageable, like the ~17,500 mph of low Earth orbit, and skip the inferno entirely? ...

Mission status note: this page includes a time-sensitive status snapshot from April 6, 2026. For live updates, use the official NASA links below and the site tracking page. In Brief Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis program and the first time astronauts have traveled toward the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission uses NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth. ...