The first astronauts to journey to the Moon in additional than half a century are again on Earth after a record-setting mission aboard NASA’s Artemis II check flight.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down at 5:07 p.m. PDT Friday off the coast of San Diego, finishing a virtually 10-day journey that took them 252,756 miles from residence at their farthest distance from Earth.
“Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, welcome home, and congratulations on a truly historic achievement. NASA is grateful to President Donald Trump and partners in Congress for providing the mandate and resources that made this mission and the future of Artemis possible,” stated NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Artemis II demonstrated extraordinary skill, courage, and dedication as the crew pushed Orion, SLS (Space Launch System), and human exploration farther than ever before. As the first astronauts to fly this rocket and spacecraft, the crew accepted significant risk in service of the knowledge gained and the future we are determined to build. NASA also acknowledges the contributions of the entire NASA workforce, along with our international partners, whose expertise and commitment were essential to this mission’s success. With Artemis II complete, focus now turns confidently toward assembling Artemis III and preparing to return to the lunar surface, build the base, and never give up the Moon again.”
After splashdown within the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts had been met by a mixed NASA and U.S. army crew that assisted them out of the spacecraft in open water and transported them through helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for preliminary medical checkouts. The crew members are anticipated to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, April 11.
During their mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen flew 694,481 miles in whole. Their lunar flyby took them farther than any people have ever traveled earlier than, surpassing the earlier distance file set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
The first Artemis crew launched on NASA’s SLS rocket at 6:35 p.m. April 1, from Launch Pad 39B on the company’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With 8.8 million kilos of thrust at liftoff, the American-built rocket propelled the crew contained in the Orion spacecraft to house, delivering it to orbit with pinpoint accuracy after a clean countdown performed by the company’s Artemis launch management crew.
During the primary day in house, the astronauts and groups on the bottom checked out the spacecraft — named Integrity by the crew — to affirm all programs had been wholesome forward of the transit to the Moon. NASA additionally deployed 4 CubeSats from worldwide companions to Earth orbit.
On the second day of the check flight, with all programs Go, Orion’s service module fired its fundamental engine, putting the astronauts on a trajectory that introduced them 4,067 miles above the lunar floor at their closest method.
“The Artemis II crew is home. The entry, descent, and landing systems performed as designed and the final test was completed as intended. This moment belongs to the thousands of people across fourteen countries who built, tested, and trusted this vehicle. Their work protected four human lives traveling at 25,000 miles per hour and brought them safely back to Earth,” stated NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “Artemis II proved the vehicle, the teams, the architecture, and the international partnership that will return humanity to the lunar surface. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy carried the hopes of this world farther than humans have traveled in more than half a century. Fifty‑three years ago, humanity left the Moon. This time, we returned to stay. The future is ours to win.”
With astronauts aboard for the primary time, engineers put Orion by means of a full in‑flight analysis. The crew examined the spacecraft’s life help programs, confirming Orion can maintain people in deep house. During a number of piloting demonstrations, crew members took handbook management of the spacecraft, flying Orion to validate its dealing with and gather information that can information future rendezvous and docking operations with human-rated landers throughout Artemis III and past.
The crew accomplished a collection of checks to inform how NASA will fly future missions to the Moon, together with evaluations of how the spacecraft operates throughout crew train, emergency gear and procedures, the Orion crew survival system spacesuits, and different essential spacecraft programs.
Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen additionally supported scientific investigations to assist NASA put together astronauts to reside and work on the Moon because the company builds a Moon Base and appears towards Mars. These experiments — together with the AVATAR investigation, which research how human tissue responds to microgravity and the deep house radiation surroundings, and different human analysis efficiency research — are gathering important well being information for long-duration missions.
During their April 6 lunar flyby, the astronauts captured greater than 7,000 pictures of the lunar floor and a solar eclipse, throughout which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion’s vantage level. The imagery contains putting views of earthset and earthrise, influence craters, historic lava flows, our Milky Way galaxy, and floor fractures and shade variations throughout the lunar terrain.
They documented the topography alongside the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night time — the place low-angle daylight casts lengthy shadows throughout the floor, creating illumination situations comparable to these within the South Pole area the place astronauts are scheduled to land in 2028. The crew additionally proposed potential names for two lunar craters and reported meteoroid influence flashes on the night time facet of the Moon.
Artemis II science will pave the best way for future missions to the Moon’s floor by serving to advance mission operations and coaching astronauts to use well-informed judgment to establish areas of excessive curiosity for science and exploration.
With the crew safely on Earth, NASA and its companions now will flip consideration to getting ready for subsequent yr’s Artemis III mission, when a brand new Orion crew will check built-in operations with commercially constructed Moon landers in low Earth orbit.
As a part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will ship Artemis astronauts on more and more difficult missions to discover extra of the Moon for scientific discovery, financial advantages, set up an everlasting human presence on the lunar floor, and lay the groundwork for sending the primary astronauts – American astronauts – to Mars.
To be taught extra concerning the Artemis program, go to:
-end-
Bethany Stevens / Rachel Kraft
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov
