“We certainly like having communication with our spacecraft – it’s a nice warm fuzzy feeling to be able to hear the crew and see that telemetry data coming down,” admits Antkowiak. “I think as you get near that time that the com comes back, you have a whole room of people in mission control just staring at their screens, waiting for the data to come back on time.”
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For the crew, however, this period out of contact with mission control is likely to be another highlight. It will be just them and the Moon as they fly above areas of the lunar surface never directly seen before with human eyes. The astronauts are scheduled, in the official timeline, to spend the time looking out of the window taking photos, shooting video and recording their thoughts.
Once Orion has swung round the Moon, physics also dictates that it will be coming home fast. Approaching the Earth, the capsule will be travelling at some 25,000 mph (40,200km/h). As Orion passes into the atmosphere, it will experience temperatures of more than 2,000C (3,632F) – potentially the most dangerous few minutes of the mission. During Artemis I in 2022, the heatshield was damaged on re-entry, one of the reasons Artemis II has been so delayed.
The risks of returning to Earth are something Perryman appreciates only too well. He was on duty in mission control when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in January 2003, killing the seven astronauts on board.
