Miami/The Artemis II manned capsule, which orbited the Moon in a historic mission, landed this Friday near the coast of San Diego (California) with the help of parachutes to reduce the speed of a free fall lasting about 14 minutes after entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
The four astronauts entered the Earth’s atmosphere this Friday after a ten-day mission in which they orbited the Moon, making history after more than half a century without human presence on that natural satellite.
NASA has reported that all the maneuvers have turned out “perfectly”, without any type of problem on the ship.
The descent is a litmus test of the ship’s heat shield
The descent was a test by fire of the ship’s heat shield, which protected the crew, made up of astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, from high temperatures.
The crew also felt that they weighed four times as much due to the speed, which was reduced with the deployment of several parachutes before reaching the Pacific Ocean, near the coast of San Diego (California).
The four astronauts took off on April 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a mission that orbited the natural satellite – without landing on the moon – and became the first manned mission to reach lunar orbit since 1972.
After having traveled more than 1.1 million kilometers (about 694,481 miles), Orion will splash down and be recovered by the US military. It will take 30 to 45 minutes to recover the astronauts.
