Splashdown! Artemis II crew return safely to Earth
The NASA spacecraft carrying the four astronauts of Artemis II — Commander Reid Wiseman, 50, pilot Victor Glover, 49, Christina Koch, 47, and Jeremy Hansen, 50 — splashed down as planned off the coast of San Diego, California at 5:07pm Pacific time, in perfect weather.
The safe return of the crew module, known during descent as Integrity, followed a nerve-wracking set of maneuvers during the mission's final half hour.
Integrity had to separate from its service module, reorient itself for a "raise burn" that assisted reentry, and then had to weather an expected communications blackout of exactly six minutes as it reentered Earth's atmosphere.
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Finally, a series of hair-raising parachute deployments concluded with the reveal of three iconic red and white parachutes.
On reaching the Pacific, the crew were reported as "green" — meaning all OK — and balloons deployed to help keep it afloat while Integrity powered down. The only snag, apparently, was was a non-working satellite phone.
The astronauts remained in good spirits throughout the process, and had plenty of time to look around on the way down — and back up again.
"The moon looks smaller than it did yesterday," Commander Wiseman noted to mission control some 23 minutes before splashdown.
"Guess we'll just have to go back, then," responded Artemis II Chief Training Officer Jacki Mahaffey.
The successful trip, which in looping around the moon went further from Earth than any humans have ever gone, was intended to prepare the hardware and the flight controllers for a moon landing in 2028, the first in more than a half-century.
NASA also aims to use the moon to practice keeping humans alive in another world for extended periods before going to Mars. The U.S. also has an interest in landing on the moon again before China, which is close to achieving its own first human moon landing.
Watch splashdown below, starting at about the 1 hour, 35 minute mark:
Elisha Sauers contributed to this report.
Topics NASA
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
