Mike Baker

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In today's Back of the Brief, after an historic 10-day mission around the moon, traveling further in space than any humans have before, NASA's Artemis II crew is preparing for splashdown tonight at 8.07 p.m.

Eastern Time.

The four astronauts will bring their Orion capsule back through Earth's atmosphere before landing in the Pacific Ocean, where recovery teams aboard the USS John P. Murtaugh are standing by off the coast of San Diego.

At a time when the world seems almost overwhelmed with conflict, Artemis II has been an incredible story of courage, adventure, and human spirit that, frankly, we all needed.

Now, while this is the final leg of their journey, it may also be the most dangerous part of the entire mission.

As the capsule reenters the Earth's atmosphere, it will be traveling at roughly 24,000 miles per hour.

At that speed, the air in front of the spacecraft doesn't just rush past, it compresses and superheats, creating temperatures of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The only thing standing between that heat and the astronauts inside the capsule is what's known as the heat shield, a protective layer on the bottom of the capsule designed to absorb and burn away as it takes on that extreme energy.

And that's where the concern comes in.

During the earlier Artemis 1 mission, which flew the same Orion design without a crew, engineers found unexpected damage on the heat shield after splashdown.

Chunks of material had broken off instead of burning away evenly.

NASA says it understands what caused that issue.

Gas buildup inside the material, creating pressure that led to cracking, and has adjusted the reentry path of Artemis 2 to reduce the stress on the shield.

In simple terms, they're bringing the capsule in faster and steeper, limiting how long it's exposed to peak heat.

NASA officials say they're confident the system will hold, but apparently not everyone agrees.

Some former NASA engineers and astronauts warn the agency still doesn't fully understand how that heat shield behaves under these conditions, and that there's no backup system if it fails.