Four astronauts and their Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, bringing the first crewed trip around the moon and back since 1972 to a successful end.
“What a journey!” mission commander Reid Wiseman said moments after splashdown.
During their 10-day odyssey, the crew of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission — Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — became the most distant travelers in history, swinging more than 4,000 miles past the moon’s far side. Koch is the first woman to venture beyond Earth orbit, Glover is the first Black astronaut to do so, and Hansen is the first non-U.S. astronaut to make such a trip.
The flight tested the Artemis program’s hardware and procedures to prepare the way for sending astronauts all the way to the lunar surface by as early as 2028, and for building a permanent lunar base in the 2030s.
Orion’s hardware — including components built in the Seattle area — came through when it counted. Two sets of thrusters for Orion were built by L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne team in Redmond, Wash., while mechanisms that were made by Karman Space & Defense in Mukilteo, Wash., facilitated the safe deployment of Orion’s parachutes in the mission’s final minutes.
NASA calculated that Orion traveled 694,481 miles in all, from its launch atop a massive Space Launch System rocket on April 1 to its splashdown off the coast of California at 5:07 p.m. PT.
Textbook end to a history-making trip
The final hour of the mission unfolded as NASA planned. After jettisoning its European-built service module, the Orion crew module — christened Integrity by the astronauts — hit the atmosphere at a speed of 24,661 mph. The shock of re-entry created a shield of ionized plasma around the spacecraft that blacked out communications for six minutes.
The crew endured G-forces that ranged up to 3.9 times the force of Earth’s gravity — about what they felt during launch — and Orion’s heat shield endured temperatures of 4,000 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The trajectory for Orion’s descent was designed to reduce the stress on the heat shield, after NASA discovered that the heat shield for an earlier uncrewed round-the-moon mission, Artemis 1, underwent more serious charring than expected.
“This is the true test of our trajectory,” NASA commentator Rob Navias said.
Orion passed the test: “Houston, Integrity: We have you loud and clear,” Wiseman told Mission Control when the blackout ended, sparking a cheer from ground controllers.
The spacecraft’s parachutes deployed on cue, and Orion’s descent slowed to a speed of 19 mph by the time it hit the water in the Pacific southwest of San Diego.
Moments after splashdown, Wiseman reported that all four of the astronauts were in good health. Orion’s airbags were inflated with helium to help stabilize the floating craft.
“It was a textbook mission,” Navias said.
Recovery teams converged on the touchdown site, hampered somewhat by a glitch that arose with the crew’s satellite phone connection. Mission Control was able to stay in two-way contact with the crew via radio, however, and assisted with post-splashdown operations.
Looking back, looking ahead
Over the next couple of hours, the astronauts are due to be extracted from Orion and flown by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha, an amphibious transport dock ship that served as the lead ship in the recovery effort. After undergoing medical checks, they’ll be brought to shore in San Diego and fly to Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Orion capsule will be towed back onto the USS John P. Murtha’s well deck for transport.
On the ship, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said he “couldn’t be more proud of the entire workforce” at the space agency.
“The childhood Jared can’t believe what I just saw,” said Isaacman, who was born 10 years after the final Apollo moon mission in 1972. “I’ve almost been waiting my whole life to see this.”
He pledged that Artemis 2’s round-the-moon trip wouldn’t be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.”
Check back for updates in this developing story.
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