Houston, Apr 11:
Artemis II’s astronauts returned from the moon with a dramatic splashdown in the Pacific on Friday to close out humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than a half-century.
It was a triumphant homecoming for the crew of 85four whose record-breaking lunar flyby revealed not only swaths of the moon’s far side – never seen before by human eyes – but a total solar eclipse.
They emerged from their bobbing capsule into the sunlight one by one.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere traveling Mach 33 – or 33 times the speed of sound – a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s. Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the plunge on automatic pilot.
The tension in Mission Control mounted as the capsule became engulfed in red-hot plasma during peak heating and entered a planned communication blackout.
All eyes were on the capsule’s life-protecting heat shield that had to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry.