Artemis II returns to Earth
NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down safely after a roughly 700,000-mile lunar round trip, marking the agency’s first moon voyage in more than half a century (deseret.com). Coverage notes the mission’s symbolic milestones and ties the splashdown back to Florida’s Space Coast as a narrative anchor for travel and exploration storytelling (spacecoastdaily.com).
NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time on April 10, ending a 10-day trip around the Moon. (nasa.gov) Orion came down near San Diego after launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1 with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen aboard. (nasa.gov) NASA said the crew traveled about 695,081 miles from launch to splashdown, passed within 4,070 miles of the lunar surface, and reached a maximum distance of 252,760 miles from Earth. (nasa.gov) That farthest point put Artemis II about 4,105 miles beyond the Apollo 13 record, giving NASA its longest human spaceflight by distance during a mission built to test Orion in deep space. (nasa.gov) Artemis is NASA’s program for returning astronauts to the Moon with newer hardware than Apollo used. Artemis II was the first crewed test flight, so the mission’s job was to fly people around the Moon and bring them home before any landing attempt. (nasa.gov) The spacecraft looped behind the Moon on April 6 and left the Moon’s sphere of influence on April 7, putting Orion on its return path to Earth. NASA described that boundary as the point where the Moon’s gravity pulls harder on Orion than Earth’s does. (nasa.gov) Reentry was the last major test. Deseret News reported a roughly six-minute communications blackout as Orion hit speeds above 25,000 miles per hour and temperatures near 5,000 degrees before parachutes slowed the capsule to about 17 miles per hour. (deseret.com) After splashdown, NASA’s recovery team and the United States military pulled the astronauts from the capsule and flew them by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for medical checks. (nasa.gov) The mission also tied together two coasts in NASA’s story line: launch from Florida’s Space Coast and return in the Pacific, with Kennedy Space Center teams supporting the flight from liftoff through recovery operations. (spacecoastdaily.com) NASA and local coverage both pointed next to Artemis III, which the agency has described as the mission meant to carry astronauts back to the lunar surface after Artemis II cleared the crewed flyby test. (spacecoastdaily.com)
