Artemis II splashdown

NASA’s Artemis II crew returned to Earth on April 10, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time. (nasa.gov) The four-person crew — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — launched on April 1 aboard Orion and completed a 9-day, 1-hour, 32-minute lunar flyby mission. (nasa.gov) Orion is NASA’s deep-space crew capsule, built to keep astronauts alive beyond low Earth orbit and bring them home through a high-speed reentry. Artemis II was its first crewed test flight, and NASA said the mission was designed to verify life support, communications, navigation, and other systems with astronauts on board. (nasa.gov) The mission also tested how astronauts and ground controllers handle deep-space operations before a landing attempt. Early in flight, the crew manually piloted Orion near its upper stage in a proximity operations demonstration, a rehearsal for rendezvous and docking work planned for Artemis III. (nasa.gov) On April 6, Artemis II reached 248,655 miles from Earth, passing the Apollo 13 mark for the farthest distance traveled by humans. NASA said Orion later reached about 252,756 miles from Earth at its farthest point before turning back. (nasa.gov) NASA described Artemis II as the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, ending the gap since the Apollo era’s last human missions to the Moon. The agency says the Artemis campaign is intended to lead to later surface missions and, after that, missions toward Mars. (nasa.gov) Splashdown was the public finish, but NASA treated it as the start of post-flight inspection. Coverage from flight day 10 and the post-splashdown briefing focused on Orion’s reentry, parachute performance, and recovery operations with the United States Navy ship USS John P. Murtha. (nasa.gov) (youtube.com) NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman welcomed the astronauts back after recovery, and the agency’s release called them the first people to travel to the Moon in more than half a century. NASA also highlighted images from the far side of the Moon and the crew’s return to Houston after the mission. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2) The mission closed with the same point it opened on: Artemis II was a test flight. NASA now has fresh flight data from launch, deep space, lunar flyby, reentry, and recovery to use before sending a later Artemis crew on toward the Moon’s surface. (nasa.gov)