• Source:JND

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration marked the victorious end of the Artemis II mission by sharing dramatic footage of the spacecraft’s splashdown, capturing the historic moment the Orion capsule returned safely to Earth after its historic journey around the Moon.

Sharing a post on X, NASA welcomed the crew home, writing, “Welcome home Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy! The Artemis II astronauts have splashed down at 8:07pm ET (0007 UTC April 11), bringing their historic 10-day mission around the Moon to an end."

The video shows the capsule plunging under three massive parachutes after surviving a high-speed reentry through Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic velocities, where temperatures outside the spacecraft reached as high as 2,700°C and a plasma sheath briefly cut off communications during the blackout phase.

Orion then transformed from guided atmospheric flight to controlled descent, deploying its parachutes in sequence to slow from orbital reentry speeds to a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

As the spacecraft descended, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, who spent nearly 10 days in space. During the mission, the crew traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them, surpassing Apollo-era distance records and reaching over 400,000 kilometers from Earth while orbiting beyond the Moon’s far side. They also captured high-resolution imagery of the lunar surface and Earthset views, providing valuable data for future deep space missions.

The four entered the atmosphere at Mach 33, or 33 times the speed of sound. This was the first time since the 1960s and 1970s that NASA was able to take such moonshots. The second stage of the Artemis programme served as a test flight to confirm the dependability of the Orion capsule, which had not previously carried astronauts.

The Orion capsule's life capsule will have to endure thousands of degrees and grab the attention of many. The shield's burned exterior seemed as stained as the moon during the spacecraft's lone prior test voyage in 2022, when no one was on board.


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