Artemis II splashdown

NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off California at 8:07 p.m. Eastern on April 10, ending a nearly 10-day flight around the Moon. (nasa.gov) The four astronauts were Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. NASA said recovery teams from the agency, the United States Navy, and the United States Air Force moved in after splashdown and later extracted the crew from Orion. (nasa.gov) Orion came home fast and hot: NASA’s reentry timeline put the capsule at nearly 35 times the speed of sound at 400,000 feet, with temperatures around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit after the crew module separated from its service module. NASA also planned for a six-minute communications blackout as plasma built up around the capsule during entry. (nasa.gov) This mission was NASA’s first crewed lunar flyby in about 50 years and the first time humans traveled beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis II was also the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. (nasa.gov) Artemis II was a test flight, not a landing mission. NASA says Orion is designed to carry astronauts to the Moon and back, and Artemis II was meant to prove the spacecraft, rocket, and recovery systems with people aboard before later lunar surface missions. (nasa.gov) The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1 and lasted 9 days, 1 hour, and 32 minutes, according to NASA’s mission page. During the flight, the crew swung around the far side of the Moon on April 6 and left the Moon’s sphere of influence on April 7 for the trip home. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2) NASA said the crew also set a new human-distance record on April 6, passing the mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970 for the farthest distance from Earth reached by people. The agency called that milestone part of Artemis II’s deep-space test of life support, navigation, communications, and reentry systems. (nasa.gov) After splashdown, Orion was brought into the well deck of the USS John P. Murtha for the trip back to Naval Base San Diego. NASA said the spacecraft will then return to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for post-flight analysis as the agency prepares for the next Artemis missions. (nasa.gov)