The four Artemis II astronauts have returned from the world’s first crewed Moon voyage in over half a century after their Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California.
US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, ended up bobbing safely in the ocean aboard their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, shortly after 8 pm ET (0000 GMT) on Friday off the coast of San Diego.
Earlier, the autonomously piloted Orion crew capsule executed one last eight-second firing of its jet thrusters to fine-tune the flight course, a critical maneuver to ensure a safe return.
NASA’s celebrated 10-day mission culminated with the gumdrop-shaped Orion vehicle jettisoning the service module housing its main rocket system, followed by a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere and a six-minute radio blackout before the capsule parachutes into the sea.
The quartet blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, lofted into an initial Earth orbit by NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket before sailing on around the far side of the Moon, venturing deeper into space than any humans before them.
They became the first astronauts to fly in the vicinity of the Moon since the Apollo programme of the 1960s and ’70s.
Glover, Koch and Hansen also made history as the first Black astronaut, the first woman and first non-US citizen, respectively, to take part in a lunar mission.
Mars mission
The voyage, following 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 programme 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 Cold War era of Apollo, the Artemis II mission has played out against a backdrop of political and social turmoil, including a US military conflict that has proven unpopular at home.
The four Artemis astronauts spent much of the final 24 hours of the mission stowing equipment and configuring the crew cabin for the re-entry and splashdown to come.
The return to Earth put the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft through a critical test of its heat shield, which sustained an unexpected level of scorching and stress on re-entry during the 2022 test flight.