Artemis II crew returns

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts are back on Earth after a 10-day trip around the Moon, splashing down in the Pacific on April 10. (nasa.gov) NASA said Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen landed at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time off San Diego after reentering Earth’s atmosphere aboard the Orion spacecraft. (nasa.gov) The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. Eastern time on April 1 atop the Space Launch System rocket. NASA lists the flight as 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes. (nasa.gov) Artemis II was a flyby, not a landing mission. NASA sent the crew around the far side of the Moon to test the Orion capsule and other deep-space systems with people on board before later lunar surface missions. (nasa.gov) NASA called it the first time astronauts had traveled to the Moon in more than half a century. The agency said the spacecraft reached 252,756 miles from Earth at its farthest point. (nasa.gov) The crew also set individual marks during the flight. NASA said Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit, Glover became the first Black astronaut to make a lunar voyage, and Hansen became the first Canadian to fly to the Moon. (nasa.gov) A social post from the Peace Corps tied the return to a longer arc of U.S. space history by mentioning Dr. Mae Jemison. NASA says Jemison served as a Peace Corps medical officer in Sierra Leone and Liberia before becoming an astronaut. (x.com, nasa.gov) Jemison flew on Space Shuttle Endeavour in September 1992 and became the first Black woman in space, according to NASA and the National Library of Medicine. Her mention alongside Artemis II put the Moon flyby in a broader story about who gets represented in American spaceflight. (nasa.gov, nlm.nih.gov) NASA said the Artemis II crew returned to Johnson Space Center in Houston on April 11 and reunited with their families. The agency is using the mission’s data to prepare for the next flights in the Artemis program. (nasa.gov)