The Artemis II crew has already done the hard part…or so it seems. They survived liftoff, crossed radiation fields, broke the all-time record for how far humans have traveled from Earth, and watched a solar eclipse from behind the moon. Now they are almost home.
And the former NASA astronaut says coming home may be the most dangerous part of all.
The Artemis II spacecraft is scheduled to touch down off the coast of San Diego on Friday at approximately 8:07 a.m. ET. But before that, the crew — commander Reed Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hanson — must survive re-entry: the phase of flight in which their capsule is ejected into Earth’s atmosphere at more than 25,000 miles per hour, with space temperatures exceeding 50 degrees. Fahrenheit.
Standing between the crew and that heat is a shield that was badly damaged in the last mission.
What happened to the Artemis II heat shield?
When the decommissioned Artemis I capsule returned from its test flight around the moon in 2022, mission teams found the heat shield had come back with pockmarks and cracks. An investigation determined that gases generated within the outer material of the shield could not be properly vented during re-entry, causing pressure to build, cracks to form, and the burning material to break off in multiple locations.
Problem: By the time those discoveries were completed, the heat shield had already been installed on the Artemis II capsule, and it was too late to change it. NASA’s solution was not to replace the shield, but to change the spacecraft’s reentry trajectory, using a “loft” approach instead of the “skip” reentry used on Artemis I, hoping to create more favorable thermal conditions and limit further cracking.
Why Reentry is the most dangerous part
Former NASA astronaut Charlie Camarda — a heat shield expert who flew on the first space shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster — doesn’t believe the solution is enough. He was invited to a meeting at NASA headquarters in January to review the agency’s research data and walked out.
Camarda asserts that the tools NASA used to analyze the problem are inadequate, comparing them to tools that failed to capture the problems behind both the challenge and the Columbia disaster. He believes that the root cause of the Artemis I heat shield damage was an underlying structural failure—not just a matter of re-entry angle—and that NASA’s modified trajectory did not solve the underlying problem.
“The fact that we decided to fly the crew in a vehicle with a known defective heat shield is irresponsible,” Camarda said. “We are trying to prevent the loss of the Artemis II crew. History doesn’t repeat itself because engineers forget the equations. It repeats itself because organizations forget to listen to them.”
Camarda stressed that he is not predicting a catastrophic failure. He believes the mission will likely return home safely. His deepest fear is that a safe landing will be treated as validation that NASA’s decision-making is correct, setting the stage for more serious failures down the road.
NASA officials weigh in
NASA officials have repeatedly maintained that safety is a top priority and that the agency fully understands the limitations of heat shields. Former NASA Associate Administrator James Free said engineers determined the crew was “well within” safety standards under the modified trajectory.
“How you enter the environment is everything,” Free said. “If you limit the angle at which it comes in, it limits how far you can go, which limits your landing attempts — but you still stay within the temperature limits required for Artemis II, and that’s what they’re planning.”
Pilot Victor Glover accepted Paul’s weight from the spacecraft this week.
“I’ll be honest and say, I’ve actually been thinking about entry since April 3, 2023, when we were assigned to this mission,” Glover said. “We have to come back. There’s a lot of data that you’ve already seen, but all the good stuff is coming back with us.”
A splashdown is scheduled for around 8:07 a.m. ET Friday off the coast of San Diego. A diver would photograph the heat shield from below immediately after recovery – providing the first evidence of how it performed.
This story was originally published by Men’s Journal on April 10, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men’s Journal as a preferred resource by clicking here.
