00:00On April local time, a few thousand kilometers off the coast of San Diego,
00:04Orion began its plunge back into the atmosphere.
00:07At nearly 40,000 km per hour. Practically identical to the TLI or Translunar Injection Speed.
00:15Only this time toward Earth instead of the Moon.
00:18For a brief moment the re-entry was even visible from the International Space Station.
00:22The re-entry angle had to be hit to within less than 0.4 degrees.
00:28Rick Henflink, the entry flight director, put it this way.
00:32Less than one degree of angular deviation after a quarter million mile flight to the Moon.
00:40And his team hit it. Pretty impressive.
00:43This is where the hottest phase of the mission began.
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