As Artemis II heads back to Earth, crew is staking their lives on the heat shield

Space As Artemis II heads back to Earth, crew is staking their lives on the heat shield By William Harwood William Harwood CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. Read Full Bio William Harwood April 9, 2026 / 6:15 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google When the Artemis II Orion crew capsule returns to Earth on Friday after flying around the moon, it will hit the discernible atmosphere some 75 miles above the Pacific Ocean at a blistering 24,000 mph — fast enough to fly from Los Angeles to New York in about 6 minutes.  Within seconds, temperatures across its 16.5-foot-wide heat shield will climb to some 5,000 degrees — half as hot as the visible surface of the sun — as the ship rapidly slows in an electrically charged fireball of atmospheric friction. The four astronauts on board — commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — are counting on the heat shield to keep them safe, in a comfortable environment, all the way through the peak heating zone to a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of California. "We have high confidence in the system, in the heat shield and the parachutes and the recovery systems we put together," Amit Kshatriya, NASA's associate administrator, said Thursday. "The engineering supports it, the Artemis I flight data supports it. All of our ground tests support it, our analysis supports it, and tomorrow the crew is going to put their lives behind that confidence." The Artemis II heat shield during its assembly. The 16.5-foot-wide heat shield is required to protect the Orion capsule and its crew from the 5,000-degree heat of the ship's high-speed plunge back into the atmosphere. NASA The crew and mission managers are confident, they say, despite major problems with th...