A lot of practice led up to this week’s event, and seeing everything come together at sea gives me great confidence that the air, water, ground, and medical support teams are ready to safely recover the spacecraft and the crew for this historic mission.
The quote by Artemis II landing and recovery director Lili Villarreal contains a frequently overlooked fact of human spaceflight: the mission begins long before liftoff. To Artemis II a 10-day crewed mission that will orbit the Moon with four astronauts, the most visible thing is the launch, although the work that enables it is spread across the health protocols, ground operations and ocean recovery rehearsal all of which have to work together.
The crew led by NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, Jeremy Hansen, joined NASA health stabilization program in Houston. The minimum duration of quarantine is usually 14 days prior to launch which decreases the chances of an ill-inspired late schedule change. The practice also offers the flexibility of operation: when significant integrated testing takes more time, the crew can leave quarantine and re-enter the program to fit a new target date without the health margin.
Training Final. Within that silent routine. Mission drills and medical checkouts are still scheduled on the calendar, although there are fewer face-to-face contacts, there are more controlled contacts with visitors who adhere to quarantine measures, and the masking and distancing are used thoughtfully during the necessary tasks. It is a conservative position constructed to serve one purpose only, that of ensuring that the crew is medically ready when vehicle preparedness eventually meet.
At Kennedy Space Center, that intersection relies on steps, which are mechanically simple but operationally inexcusable. Pad and vehicle checkouts, including cryogenic propellant lines, mechanical power systems, have been finalized by Launch Pad 39B teams and preparations made to undergo the integrated fueling demonstration to conduct one procedure with ground hardware, flight hardware, and the launch team. The wet dress of Artemis II is aimed to load over 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants, operated countdown, and detanking in the absence of astronauts. This rehearsal is not about speed; it is more about repeatability – ensuring that all valves, sensors, thermal conditioning, and handoffs associated with launch control are functioning as a system, not as a collection of separately “green” subsystems.
Preparations are also underway long distance to the pad, at the Pacific Ocean where Artemis II comes to rest. A combined NASA, U.S. Department of Defense team fulfilled Underway Recovery Test-12 of USS Somerset off the coast of California, rehearsing the ballet that will occur upon the Orion returns through the atmosphere of the Earth. The reentry profile of the capsule will consist of the deceleration process between nearly 25,000 mph and around 325 mph, and then the 11 parachutes will be deployed, to enable the capsule to reach a speed of approximately 20 mph at the splashdown point. Then, divers will use a connection collar, and towing lines bring Orion into the well deck of the ship, and aboard crews stabilize the vehicle to be transported back to the shore, the process that should be efficiently implemented at the time when the crew changes to medical checkouts and post-flight operations.
Artemis II is an engineering flight test with crewmembers: a complete-system test of the Space Launch System, Orion, ground infrastructure, flight operations, and recovery. It is the proving run which must prove deep-space human systems, life support, communications, navigation and, most importantly, high-energy returning systems before more ambitious missions to the lunar surface can be undertaken.
The quarantine is the tiniest fragment of that construction. Also contained in it is the reminder that deep-space reliability is constructed of disciplined margins, biological, mechanical, and operational, which are maintained until they are needed.