Artemis II splashdown is scheduled for 8:07 Eastern, and the Orion capsule is cooking toward Earth fast enough that reentry is expected to produce a significant fireball through the atmosphere. Everything on NASA's tracker is showing green. Nobody wants to jinx it.

On April 8th at 4 a.m., the Alan I. Carswell Observatory at York University pointed its telescope through part of a wall to capture the Orion capsule moving against the background stars on its way home. The capsule is small and dim and was low on the horizon, right at the limit of visibility. They caught it anyway. One pixel. Moving fast. Somewhere inside it, Jeremy Hansen, only the second country in history to send someone around the moon. The Space Shuttle Atlantis made its final gliding landing in 2011 without engines, one shot, cross your fingers. By the end of its life it had been patched together with so many different parts you couldn't have built it on purpose. Artemis is a different thing entirely.

Canada might lose Canadarm 3 from the lunar gateway. This mission is the argument for why that would be a mistake worth fighting.

Topics: Artemis II splashdown, Orion capsule, Jeremy Hansen, Alan I Carswell Observatory, Canada space program

GUEST: Elaina Hyde | https://www.youtube.com/live/dT_ykVY1VaI

Originally aired on 2026-04-09