Artemis II astronauts return to Earth last

NASA officials highlighted this Friday the key role of the technical teams after the success of the Artemis II mission and stressed that “the path to the Moon is advancing” although “the challenges ahead will be greater.”

Artemis II today completed a ten-day mission that took off from Florida on April 1, during which it orbited the Moon without landing, marking the return of astronauts to its vicinity for the first time since 1972, in the era of the Apollo program.

After the return of the capsule with the four astronauts, the agency’s associate administrator, Amit Kshatriya, highlighted in a press conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston the role of the teams that made the mission possible.

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“You will listen to the astronauts tomorrow, but tonight it belongs to the team that built the machine in which they traveled,” he said, recognizing the work of engineers, technicians, flight controllers and recovery personnel who participated in the project.

Kshatriya maintained that “the path to the lunar surface remains open” after this step and that “the work that remains ahead is greater than that which has already been done.”

“Apollo achieved amazing things and since then we have done incredible things, but this I think will be an important step and I hope that history recognizes our work,” he added.

Meanwhile, the head of the Artemis program, Lori Glaze, celebrated the safe return of the crew, highlighted that the mission marks the beginning of a new stage and announced that the astronauts will return to Houston on Saturday.

“We sent four people to the Moon and brought them back to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years,” he noted.

Glaze added that this mission is just the beginning and asked to remain attentive to the next steps of the program, noting that it will be “the first of many” expeditions.

For his part, flight director Rick Henfling highlighted the technical results of the mission, which traveled more than 700,000 miles (1.13 million kilometers), reached a maximum speed of 24,664 miles per hour (about 39,700 km/h) and had an entry range of 1,957 miles (about 3,150 kilometers), although it landed less than a mile away (less than 1.6 kilometers) from the planned point.

“It was a truly spectacular day for NASA and all of our international partners,” he said.

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Henfling stated that the astronauts of the Artemis II mission are “happy, healthy and ready to return to Houston.”

Likewise, the head of NASA’s Earth Exploration Systems Program, Shawn Quinn, celebrated the result of the mission by stating that “it’s good to be NASA, it’s good to be American today.”

Those responsible for the agency pointed out that during the mission numerous data were collected about the heat shield of the Orion capsule. The person in charge of the program, Howard Hu, indicated that heat shield specialists are already on the recovery ship to analyze its condition.

Likewise, they noted that a leak was detected in the pressure control system, which will be investigated, while the communications blackout during reentry, caused by the plasma surrounding the ship, occurred within the expected parameters.

The crew, composed of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen, completed the mission after a trouble-free takeoff from Cape Canaveral, conditions that were repeated this Friday in the Pacific, off the coast of San Diego, where the capsule landed upon its return.

The mission is part of the United States’ return to manned lunar exploration: “The United States has once again sent astronauts to the Moon and brought them back safely,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said after splashdown, regarding this test mission of the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, designed to test the agency’s lunar exploration system.