Artemis II splashes down

NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, April 10, ending the first crewed trip around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. (nasa.gov) Orion, the capsule NASA named Integrity for this flight, hit the water at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time near San Diego, carrying commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. (nasa.gov) The mission lasted 10 days and sent the crew around the far side of the Moon before bringing them back through Earth’s atmosphere for a high-speed reentry and parachute-assisted splashdown. (nasa.gov) Artemis is NASA’s program to return astronauts to the Moon using the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and later a landing system that can take crews from lunar orbit to the surface. Artemis II was the first time NASA put people aboard Orion for a lunar mission. (nasa.gov) The flight was a test mission, not a landing attempt. NASA used it to check life-support hardware, navigation, communications, and Orion’s heat shield before sending astronauts closer to the lunar surface on later Artemis missions. (nasa.gov) Recovery teams kept working after splashdown. NASA said the crew was safely extracted from Orion and flown by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha, the Navy ship assigned to capsule and crew recovery operations. (nasa.gov) NASA said the mission set a new mark for human distance from Earth when the crew flew farther out on April 6 than any astronauts before them. The agency called the returning astronauts “record-setting moonfarers” when they came home. (nasa.gov) The four-person crew also carried firsts into the mission lineup: Glover became the first Black astronaut assigned to a lunar mission, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American headed to the Moon. Wiseman, a former International Space Station commander, led the flight. (nasa.gov) NASA has said Artemis III is planned as the next mission intended to land astronauts near the Moon’s south pole, though that flight still depends on spacesuits, a lunar lander, and other hardware now in development. Artemis II’s splashdown closed the first crewed test of that sequence. (nasa.gov; arstechnica.com)