In brief
- The Orion capsule splashed down off the coast of California on Saturday morning AEST.
- The Artemis II mission saw astronauts travel further from Earth than any human before.
Artemis II's astronauts safely splashed down in the Pacific just after 10am Saturday AEST to close out humanity’s first voyage to the moon in more than half a century.
NASA's gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into the sea off the southern California coast, concluding a mission that took the astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.
Recovery teams were sent to retrieve the four-member crew — US astronauts Reid Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50 — who emerged one by one from the capsule about 11.40am.
In a scene reminiscent of NASA’s Apollo moonshots, military helicopters hoisted the astronauts one by one from an inflatable raft docked to the capsule, hauling them aboard for the short trip to the navy’s awaiting recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha.
"These were the ambassadors from humanity to the stars that we sent out there right now, and I can’t imagine a better crew," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said from the recovery ship.
Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the entire plunge on autopilot. The lunar cruiser hit the atmosphere travelling at Mach 33 — or 33 times the speed of sound — a blistering blur not seen since the 1960s and 1970s Apollo missions.
The Artemis II flight, travelling a total of 1,117,515km across two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to start landing astronauts on the moon from 2028.
The splash down, about two hours before sunset local time, was carried by live video feed in a NASA webcast.
The crew's homecoming cleared a critical final hurdle for the Lockheed Martin-built LMT.N Orion spacecraft, proving it would withstand the extreme forces of re-entry from a lunar-return trajectory.
It followed a white-knuckle, 13-minute fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere, generating frictional heat that sent temperatures on the capsule's exterior soaring to some 2,760C.
At the peak of re-entry stress, as expected, intense heat and air compression formed a red-hot sheath of ionised gas, or plasma, that engulfed the capsule, cutting off radio communications with the crew for several minutes.
The tension broke as contact was re-established and two sets of parachutes were seen billowing from the nose of the free-falling capsule, slowing its descent to about 25km/h before Orion gently hit the water.
Artemis II's record flyby and views of the moon
Launched from Florida on 1 April, 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 406,771km.
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 channelled Apollo 8's first lunar explorers with Earthset, showing our Blue Marble setting behind the grey 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 because there’s so much" more to learn about the moon.
Artemis II was a test flight for future moon missions
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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