The crew of Artemis 2 makes a triumphant splashdown at the end of mankind’s first orbit around the moon since 1972.
Four astronauts and their Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, bringing the first crewed round trip since 1972 to a successful end.
“What a trip!” Mission Commander Reid Wiseman said after the incident.
During their 10-day odyssey, NASA’s Artemis 2 mission team – Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission technician Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen – became the farthest travelers in history, zipping more than 4,000 miles past the far side of the moon. Koch is the first woman to go outside Earth orbit, Glover is the first black astronaut to do so, and Hansen is the first non-US astronaut to make such a trip.
The spacecraft tested the Artemis program hardware and procedures for sending astronauts all the way to the lunar surface by 2028, and building a permanent lunar base in the 2030s.
“It’s the most important human spaceflight mission I think we’ve done in decades, both in terms of what it means historically, but also what it means for the future of the agency,” NASA administrator Amit Kshatriya said at a post-splashdown news conference.
Orion’s hardware — including parts built in the Seattle area — came up where it counted. Two sets of Orion thrusters were built by L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne team in Redmond, Wash., while mechanisms by Karman Space & Defense in Mukilteo, Wash., aided the safe deployment of Orion’s parachutes in the mission’s final minutes.
NASA calculated that Orion traveled a total of 700,237 miles, from its launch atop the Space Launch System’s largest rocket on April 1 to its splashdown off the coast of California at 5:07 pm PT.
The textbook concludes the history-making journey
The last hour of the mission happened as NASA had planned. After launching its European-built service module, the Orion crew module – called Loyalty by astronauts – blasted through space at a speed of more than 24,000 mph. The re-entry shock created a plasma field around the spacecraft that knocked out radio communications for six minutes.
The crew endured G-forces up to 3.9 times Earth’s gravity — about what they felt during launch — and Orion’s heat shield endured temperatures of 4,000 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion’s descent route was designed to reduce stress on the heat shield, after NASA discovered that the heat shield of the previous lunar rover, Artemis 1, had exploded more than expected.
“This is a real test of our approach,” said NASA analyst Rob Navias.
Orion passed the test: “Houston, Integrity: We’ve got you loud and clear,” Wiseman told Mission Control when the blackout ended, prompting cheers from ground controllers.
The space shuttle’s parachutes were deployed thoughtfully, and Orion’s descent slowed to a speed of 19 mph when it hit the Pacific waters southwest of San Diego.
Moments later, Wiseman reported that all four astronauts were in good health. Orion’s airbags were filled with helium to help stabilize the floating ship.
“It was textbook work,” Navias said.
The rescue teams converged on the touchdown zone, interrupted by a glitch in the crew’s satellite phone connection. Mission Control was able to stay in contact with the crew via radio, however, and helped with troubleshooting.
The astronauts were ejected from space and lifted into helicopters for transfer to the USS John P. Murtha, an amphibious transport ship that was acting as the lead ship in the recovery effort. After a medical examination, they will be brought ashore in San Diego – and on Saturday, they will be flown to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Meanwhile, the Orion capsule will be towed back to the deck of the USS John P. Murtha for transport.
Back at Mission Control, Artemis 2 crew members hug each other as they watch a video from the Pacific. “The work is done, but the song continues,” said Navias.
On board, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said he “couldn’t be prouder of all the employees” at the space station.
“Childhood Jared can’t believe what he just saw,” said Isaacman, who was born ten years after Apollo’s last moon walk in 1972. “I’ve probably been waiting my whole life to see this.
He promised that Artemis 2’s trip to the moon would not be a once-in-a-lifetime event. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We’re going to go back to doing this over and over again, sending astronauts to the moon until we get to it in 2028 and start building our base.”
President Donald Trump extended his congratulations. The whole trip was amazing, the accommodation was perfect and, as the President of the United States, I couldn’t be more proud! Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “I look forward to seeing you all at the White House soon. We’ll be doing it again and then, on the next step, Mars!”
Looking back, looking forward
Although Artemis 2 was primarily an engineering experiment, the mission brought scientific benefits. The astronauts made a wide-angle survey of the far side of the moon, and described areas that the Apollo astronauts could not see with their own eyes due to lighting conditions and near-orbital vision.
At the beginning and end of their lunar orbits, the Artemis 2 crew captured stunning images of Earthset and Earthrise, stirring the same awe that Apollo 8’s original Earthrise image evoked in 1968. Astronauts also saw an unearthly type of solar eclipse that created black moonlight.
The astronauts were 252,756 miles from Earth at the farthest point of their journey, surpassing the previous record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 by 4,101 miles.
Although it was a textbook job, not all went well. The first toilet installed on a spacecraft sent beyond Earth orbit malfunctioned during the exit leg of the trip, apparently due to ice blocking the sewage outlet. “Improving this ability is what we have to work on,” Isaacman said at the time.
NASA also found a small leak of helium in the oxidizer tank pressurization system on the Orion service module. Leaks haven’t been a problem for Artemis 2, but Kshatriya said the program may need to be redesigned to meet the 2028 moon landing goal.
Meanwhile, SpaceX and Blue Origin are still working on the landing systems that will be needed for future astronauts to reach the lunar surface. NASA plans to launch SpaceX’s Starship lander and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander into low Earth orbit next year during Artemis 3.
If all goes according to plan, one of those landers would facilitate the first lunar landing since 1972 during the Artemis 4 mission in early 2028, and the Artemis 5 crew will begin work on a base near the southern moon in late 2028.
As a warm-up, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is preparing to send an unmanned version of the Blue Moon lander, known as Endurance, to the southern region of the moon later this year. That region is a target for lunar exploration and colonization because its craters are thought to contain reserves of ice that can be turned into drinkable water and breathable oxygen, as well as hydrogen that can be used as rocket fuel.
Today Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp added his congratulations on the successful Artemis 2 mission, calling it “this generation’s Apollo moment.”
“Proceed to Artemis III!” he said in a post to X.
