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The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth’s atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after nearly 10 days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the moon in over half a century.

NASA’s gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, ‌parachuted gently into calm seas off the southern California coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT, concluding a mission that took the astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

The Artemis II flight, traveling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) across two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 252,000 miles away, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to return astronauts to the ‌lunar surface starting in 2028.

The splashdown, about two hours before sunset, was carried by live video feed in a NASA webcast. “A ⁠perfect bull’s eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts,” NASA commentator Rob Navias said moments after the landing.

Recovery teams were standing by ⁠to secure the floating capsule and retrieve ⁠the crew – U.S. astronauts Reid Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50.

“We got a great view of the moon out window ‌2 – looks a little smaller than yesterday,” Wiseman, mission commander, radioed to mission control in Houston minutes before the crew dove into Earth’s atmosphere.

“Guess we’ll have to go back,” mission control ⁠replied.

The crew’s homecoming cleared a critical final hurdle for the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft, proving it would ⁠withstand the extreme forces of re-entry from a lunar-return trajectory.

It followed a white-knuckle, 13-minute fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere, generating frictional heat that sent temperatures on the capsule’s exterior soaring to some 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

At the peak 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 as contact was re-established and two sets ⁠of parachutes were seen billowing from the nose of the free-falling capsule, slowing its descent to about 15 mph (25 kph) before Orion gently hit the water.

It was expected to take ⁠NASA and U.S. Navy teams about an hour to secure the floating ‌capsule, assist the four astronauts out of the vehicle, hoist them into helicopters hovering overhead and fly them to a nearby Navy ship, the USS John P. Murtha, to undergo an initial medical checkup.

The crew was expected to spend the night aboard the vessel and be flown on Saturday to Houston, where they would be reunited with family.

NASA said Thursday that the long-delayed launch of Artemis 2, the first crewed flyby mission to the Moon in more than 50 years, could come as soon as April 1.

“We are on track for a launch as early as April 1, and we are working toward that date,” Lori Glaze, a senior NASA official, told a press conference, after technical difficulties delayed a launch originally expected in February.

“It’s a test flight, and it is not without risk, but our team and our hardware are ready,” she said. “Just keep in mind we still have work” to do.

The US space agency announced in February a sudden revamp of the Artemis program, including the addition of a test mission before an eventual lunar landing.

The first launch window would be Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 pm (2224 GMT), with several others available in the following days.

“We would anticipate on the order of about four opportunities within that six-day period,” Glaze said.

The Artemis 2 mission is meant to be the first flyby of the Moon in more than half a century.

The rocket will be crewed by three American astronauts — mission commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

After launch, NASA diagrams indicate Artemis 2 will circumnavigate Earth before leaving orbit to travel to the Moon, without landing, for a lunar flyby before returning to Earth and splashing down in the ocean.

“Exactly how close the Artemis II crew will fly to the Moon will depend on when they launch,” ranging from 4,000 to 6,000 miles (6,437 to 9,656 km) above the lunar surface, because the Moon will “be in a different spot for each of the possible launch dates.”

The first Artemis flew much closer to the Moon — 80 miles above the surface — but NASA said Artemis 2 will still go “tens of thousands of miles closer than any human has been in more than 50 years.”

“At this distance the Moon will appear to the crew to be about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.”

The mission is to be followed by Artemis 3 with the goal of “rendezvous in low-Earth orbit” of at least one lunar lander.

The next phase, Artemis 4, aims for a lunar landing in early 2028, after President Donald Trump announced during his first term that he wanted Americans to once again set foot on the Moon. (Punch)

Tag: Earth

Splashdown of Artemis II concludes 10-day moon mission

NASA eyes April 1 for crewed moon mission