Artemis crew set to splashdown after 10 days in space

The Artemis crew is set for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean after 10 days in space.

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The astronauts will land approximately 50 miles off the coast of San Diego. They had their final wake-up song and finished packing up the Orion capsule, including bagging up trash.

The crew suited up in their bulky gear inside the tight capsule space. The Orion capsule will separate from the service module, positioning the heat shield correctly for re-entry.

The spacecraft will face high speeds and extreme heat during re-entry. Once the parachutes deploy, they will slow Orion down to 17 mph for splashdown, where the U.S. Navy is standing by for recovery.

The mission has been successful, with the crew returning with critical data, photos and stories. Splashdown is scheduled for 8:07 a.m.

WINK News will stream the landing later tonight. Artemis III is planned for 2027, followed by a moon landing mission in 2028.

HOUSTON (AP) - 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 four 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.

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. On the spacecraft’s only other test flight - in 2022, with no one on board - the shield’s charred exterior came back looking as pockmarked as the moon.

Like so many others, lead flight director Jeff Radigan anticipated feeling some of that “irrational fear that is human nature,” especially during the six-minute blackout that preceded the opening of the parachutes. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha awaited the crew’s arrival off the San Diego coast, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters.

The last time NASA and the Defense Department teamed up for a lunar crew's reentry was Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis II was projected to come screaming back at 36,170 feet (11,025 meters) per second - or 24,661 mph (39,668 kph) - just shy of the record before slowing to a 19 mph (30 kph) splashdown.

“A perfect bull’s-eye splashdown,” reported Mission Control’s Rob Navias.

Launched from Florida on April 1, the astronauts racked up one win after another as they deftly navigated NASA’s long-awaited lunar comeback, the first major step in establishing a sustainable moon base.

Artemis II didn't land on the moon or even orbit it. But it broke Apollo 13's distance record and marked the farthest that humans have ever journeyed from Earth when the crew reached 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers). Then in the mission's most heart-tugging scene, the teary astronauts asked permission to name a pair of craters after their moonship and Wiseman's late wife, Carroll.

During Monday's record-breaking flyby, they documented scenes of the moon's far side never seen before by the human eye along with a total solar eclipse. The eclipse, in particular, “just blew all of us away,” Glover said.

Their sense of wonder and love awed everyone, as did their breathtaking pictures of the moon and Earth. The Artemis II crew channeled Apollo 8's first lunar explorers with Earthset, showing our Blue Marble setting behind the gray moon. It was reminiscent of Apollo 8’s famous Earthrise shot from 1968.

“It just makes you want to continue to go back,” Radigan said on the eve of splashdown. “It's the first of many trips and we just need to continue on because there’s so much” more to learn about the moon.

Their moonshot drew global attention as well as star power, earning props from President Donald Trump; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney; Britain's King Charles III; Ryan Gosling, star of the latest space flick “Project Hail Mary”; Scarlett Johansson of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and even Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner of TV’s original “Star Trek.”

Despite its rich scientific yield, the nearly 10-day flight was not without technical issues. Both the capsule’s drinking water and propellant systems were hit with valve problems. In perhaps the most high-profile predicament, the toilet kept malfunctioning, but the astronauts shrugged it all off.

“We can’t explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient,” Koch said, “unless we’re making a few sacrifices, unless we’re taking a few risks, and those things are all worth it.”

Added Hansen: “You do a lot of testing on the ground, but your final test is when you get this hardware to space and it’s a doozy.”

Under the revamped Artemis program, next year’s Artemis III will see astronauts practice docking their capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will attempt to land a crew of two near the moon’s south pole in 2028.

The Artemis II astronauts' allegiance was to those future crews, Wiseman said.

“But we really hoped in our soul is that we could for just for a moment have the world pause and remember that this is a beautiful planet and a very special place in our universe, and we should all cherish what we have been gifted,” he said.

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Artemis II's record flyby and views of the moon

Artemis II was a test flight for future moon missions