- Four astronauts have flown further from Earth than anyone before.
- This mission marked the first human trip to the Moon in half a century.
- Atmospheric reentry was a key test of the capsule’s heat shield.
The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew passed through Earth’s atmosphere and landed safely in the Pacific Ocean Friday after nearly 10 days in space, capping the first human trip to the Moon’s vicinity in more than half a century.
NASA’s gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, nicknamed Integrity, parachuted gently into the sea off the southern California coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT, concluding a mission that took astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.
The Artemis II flight, traveling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) in two Earth orbits and a lunar flyby culminating about 252,000 miles away, was the first crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions aimed at beginning landing astronauts on the lunar surface beginning in 2028.
The landing, about two hours before sunset, was broadcast live on a NASA webcast.
Recovery teams were ready to secure the floating capsule and retrieve the crew: American astronauts Reid Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50.
The crew’s return cleared a final critical hurdle for the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft, proving it would withstand the extreme forces of re-entry from a return trajectory to the Moon.
That followed a fiery 13-minute dive into Earth’s atmosphere, generating frictional heat that sent temperatures outside the capsule soaring to around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).
At the height of re-entry stress, as expected, intense heat and air compression formed a red-hot sheath of ionized gas, or plasma, that engulfed the capsule, cutting off radio communications with the crew for several minutes.
The tension broke when contact was reestablished and two sets of parachutes were seen flying from the nose of the free-falling capsule, slowing its descent to about 15 mph (25 km/h) before Orion gently hit the water.
It took NASA and US Navy teams about an hour to secure the floating capsule, help the four astronauts out of the vehicle and transport them to a nearby recovery ship to undergo an initial medical examination.
Springboard to Mars
The quartet took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, placed into a first Earth orbit by NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket before embarking on a rare trip around the far side of the Moon.
In doing so, they became the first astronauts to fly near Earth’s only natural satellite since the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s. Glover, Koch and Hansen also made history as the first black astronaut, first woman and first non-U.S. citizen, respectively, to participate in a lunar mission.
At the highest point of the flight, the Artemis astronauts reached a point 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the previous record of about 248,000 miles set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 crew.
The trip, which follows the uncrewed Artemis I test flight around the moon by the Orion spacecraft in 2022, marked a critical dress rehearsal for a planned attempt later this decade to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in late 1972.
The ultimate goal of the Artemis program is to establish a long-term presence on the Moon as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.
In a historical parallel to the Apollo period of the Cold War, the Artemis II mission took place against a backdrop of political and social unrest, including a US military conflict that proved unpopular at home.
Unlike the Apollo era, when the United States rushed to send astronauts to the Moon before the Soviet Union, the Artemis program seeks to beat China.
For many of a global audience captivated by the latest moonshot, it reaffirmed the achievements of science and technology at a time when big tech has become widely distrusted, even feared. Opinion polls have shown broad public support for the mission’s goals.
Returning to Earth subjected the Orion spacecraft to a critical test of its heat shield, which suffered an unexpected level of burns and stress upon reentry during its 2022 test flight. As a result, NASA engineers modified Artemis II’s descent trajectory to reduce heat buildup and the risk of the capsule burning up.
Last week’s successful launch was a major milestone for the SLS rocket, allowing its main contractors, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, to long confirm that the launch system, in development for more than a decade, was ready to transport humans safely to space.
