Artemis II splashdown confirmed

Ten days after leaving Florida, four astronauts came home to the Pacific Ocean, with NASA confirming a parachute splashdown off San Diego at 5:07 p.m. local time on Friday, April 10. The capsule was Orion, the same deep-space spacecraft NASA launched on Artemis II on April 1 for the first crewed trip around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. (nasa.gov) This was not a Moon landing mission. Artemis II was a 9-day, 1-hour, 32-minute lunar flyby built to prove that Orion can keep a crew alive, navigate to lunar distance, and survive the heat of coming back through Earth’s atmosphere. (nasa.gov) The crew was Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Hansen flew as a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, making him the first Canadian to travel around the Moon. (nasa.gov) NASA launched them from Kennedy Space Center on April 1 atop the Space Launch System, which is the agency’s heavy-lift rocket for sending Orion beyond low Earth orbit. That launch restarted crewed lunar voyages after a 54-year gap between Apollo 17 in December 1972 and Artemis II in April 2026. (nasa.gov) By April 6, Orion had reached the Moon and carried the crew over the lunar far side during a roughly seven-hour pass. NASA said the astronauts photographed parts of the Moon “no human has ever seen before” during that flyby, including an in-space solar eclipse view. (nasa.gov) The mission also went farther from Earth than any humans had gone before. NASA said Artemis II reached 248,655 miles from Earth on April 6, breaking the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. (nasa.gov) Coming home is the hardest part of a lunar mission because the spacecraft hits the atmosphere at lunar-return speeds instead of ordinary orbit speeds. Before splashdown, NASA had Orion perform return-correction burns, including an 8-second burn on April 10 that changed the spacecraft’s speed by 4.2 feet per second to line up the final descent. (nasa.gov) After touchdown, recovery teams moved in while Orion was still floating in the water, then began the process of getting the crew out and securing the capsule. NASA said the recovery ship was the USS John P. Murtha, and Orion will next be taken to Naval Base San Diego before heading back to Florida for inspection and data removal. (nasa.gov) Artemis II was the first crewed flight of Orion, so this mission was the dress rehearsal before NASA tries to put people near the lunar surface again. On NASA’s mission page, Artemis II is described as the step meant to pave the way for future lunar surface missions under the Artemis program. (nasa.gov) That is why a splashdown off California closes more than a single voyage. It closes the first full test of NASA’s new Moon system with people aboard: launch on April 1, lunar flyby on April 6, and safe return on April 10. (nasa.gov)