Artemis II mission complete
NASA's Artemis II crew completed a lunar flyby and splashdown, marking the first crewed flight beyond low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17. NASA is already shifting focus to Artemis III and subsequent missions to test docking and lunar landing systems, with landings now part of a spaced procurement and integration timetable. (satellitetoday.com)
A lunar flyby is a fast loop around the Moon that uses gravity to turn a spacecraft back toward Earth, and NASA’s Artemis II crew finished one on April 10. (nasa.gov) NASA said Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, April 10, after a 9-day, 1-hour, 32-minute mission that launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1. (nasa.gov) The four-person crew was Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch of NASA, plus Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. NASA said they were the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than 50 years. (nasa.gov) Artemis II did not try to land. Its job was to test Orion’s life-support, navigation, communications, and reentry systems with astronauts on board before NASA puts crews into docking and landing operations on later flights. (nasa.gov) During the mission, Orion passed behind the Moon on April 6 and lost contact with Earth for about 40 minutes, a planned blackout caused by the Moon blocking radio signals. NASA said the crew spent about seven hours in its lunar observation period before starting the trip home. (nasa.gov; nasa.gov) NASA also said Artemis II traveled farther from Earth than Apollo 13, setting a new distance record for a human mission before reentry and recovery in the Pacific. (satellitetoday.com; nasa.gov) The next step is no longer a straight jump to a landing. NASA said in March that Artemis III will be a demonstration mission in low Earth orbit to test rendezvous and docking between Orion and commercial lunar landers from SpaceX or Blue Origin. (nasa.gov; nasa.gov) NASA said that revised plan adds another mission in 2027, keeps Artemis III focused on docking tests, and pushes the first Artemis lunar landing to a later mission now targeted for early 2028. (nasa.gov; nasa.gov) The agency said it made the change to standardize the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, reduce integration risk, and spread out the work of certifying commercial landers and Moon-orbit hardware. (nasa.gov) For now, Artemis II closes the first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972, and NASA has already moved the program’s center of gravity to the docking tests that have to work before any crew can descend to the lunar surface. (satellitetoday.com; nasa.gov)
