After their perfect splashdown on Friday, the crew of Artemis II —the commandere Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen— emerged from their floating capsule into the sunlight off the coast of San Diego.
Military helicopters lifted the astronauts one by one from an inflatable raft attached to the capsule, taking them aboard for the short ride to the waiting Navy recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha.
The Artemis II mission of human return to lunar orbit successfully completes. Photo: EFE.
“These are humanity’s ambassadors to the stars that we have sent into space at this very moment, and I cannot imagine a better crew,” said NASA administrator, Jared Isaacmanfrom the recovery ship.
He NASA Mission Control Center erupted in jubilation, with hundreds of people arriving from the support rooms. “We did it!” NASA’s Lori Glaze exclaimed at a news conference. “Welcome!”.
Your capsule Orionnicknamed Integrity, He made the entire descent on autopilot. It was first separated from the European service module.
The lunar rover entered the atmosphere traveling at Mach 33, or 33 times the speed of sound, a dizzying speed not seen since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
The tension in the Mission Control Center increased when the capsule became engulfed in red-hot plasma during peak heating and entered a scheduled communications blackout period. All eyes were on the capsule’s heat shield, which had to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry.
Watching the drama unfold nearly 2,000 miles away, the astronauts’ families gathered in the Mission Control Center observation room and cheered as the capsule emerged from its six-minute blackout and again at splashdown.
Koch became the first woman to fly to the moon, Glover the first black astronaut and Hansen the first non-US citizen, filling Canada with pride. They laughed, cried and hugged each other throughout the round trip, with the aim of spreading their enthusiasm to the entire world.
Once in the USS John P. MurthaAfter being transported by helicopter, they were seen smiling and waving.
NASA Artemis published a photo with the Orion capsule in X. “The astronauts of Artemis II pose for a group photo after viewing their Orion spacecraft—which they named Integrity—on the lower deck of the USS John P. Murtha after splashdown,” one message read.
Afterwards, Commander Wiseman posted a message: “In the helicopter leaving the ship right now. This planet is impossibly beautiful from every altitude I’ve seen it…from the surface to 250,000 miles.”
Wiseman, before splashdown, as they approached Earth, he said goodbye to the moon: “We have a great view of the Moon from the window,” he radioed to Mission Control. “It’s a little smaller than yesterday.”
NASA plans a new mission in 2027 that will not go to the Moon, before sending astronauts to the surface of the Earth’s satellite in 2028 during the fourth Artemis mission, in the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency… and theoretically before China, which plans to send its taikonauts to the Moon in 2030.
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