The historic mission to the Moon's completion brought the Artemis crew safely home.

 

Victor Glover and Christina Koch pictured after the crew's successful return to Earth(Image: NASA)

After a flawless return, the four astronauts on Nasa's Artemis II mission have safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. After a nine-day journey that took them farther from Earth than any humans have ever traveled, the crew is recuperating on a ship that is waiting for them. When their Orion spacecraft struck the upper atmosphere of Earth at more than 24,000 mph (38,600 km/h), its heatshield was exposed to temperatures half as hot as those on the Sun's surface. The Artemis program's next phase, which aims to land humans on the lunar surface and eventually establish a permanent base there, is now ready to begin. Their safe return clears the way. The extreme heat meant the capsule, which the astronauts named Integrity, lost contact with mission control in Houston for six minutes during the descent.

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 There were cheers when Commander Reid Wiseman's voice was heard saying: "Houston, Integrity here.  We can clearly hear you." The mission's moment of maximum jeopardy had passed, and soon the spacecraft's red-and-white parachutes opened and sent the capsule sailing majestically through the sky.

 "Beautiful main chutes!" Until the capsule made a flawless splashdown in the ocean, the Nasa commentary continued to exclaim enthusiastically.

The crew capsule, named Orion, splashed right on schedule in the Pacific Ocean, within a mile of its target(Image: Getty Images)

Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen were carefully extracted from the capsule before being flown by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for medical examinations. Nasa said they would be flown to Houston to be reunited with their families on Saturday.

 They were smiling, chatting, and posing for photos as they waited on the ship's deck. President Donald Trump welcomed them home and said the entire trip had been "spectacular", repeating an invitation for them to visit the White House.

 When they will make their first public appearance is not yet known by Nasa.

At a press conference, Flight Director Rick Henfling said there had been a lot of anxiety but also a lot of confidence while bringing the Orion crew home.

 "We all breathed a sigh of relief once the (capsule's) side hatch opened up," he said.

 "The flight crew is healthy, happy, and prepared to return to Houston." The acting associate administrator at Nasa, Lori Glaze, was extremely kind to the astronauts. She said each of the four was impressive on its own, but she was proud of their "teamwork" and "camaraderie." "I think they really brought an amazing sense of what we were trying to achieve," she added.

 "It was a mission for humanity as a whole."

Thumbs up from the history-making crew: L-R Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman(Image: NASA)

The Artemis II mission began its final descent at 19:33EDT (23:33GMT) when the European Space Agency-built service module - the cylinder of engines and solar panels that powered Orion throughout its lunar journey - detached.

 The capsule gracefully pushed away in live images, heading home. Between splashdown and re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, the most risky part came next. The capsule's angle of approach had to be precise: too shallow and Orion might skip off the atmosphere like a stone off water; too steep and the heat would be damaging.

 In the end, Nasa's television coverage said that the capsule hit a narrow spot in the sky southeast of Hawaii on its way to the California coast because of its perfect angle of attack.

Concerns had been raised regarding the heatshield on the spacecraft, which shields the capsule from the extreme heat generated when it crashes into the atmosphere's thickest layer.

Even though temperatures on Artemis I remained within safe limits, the Orion capsule's shield sustained unexpected damage during the previous, uncrewed test flight of the Artemis system in 2022. This raised questions about how hot the interior might get on a crewed mission. Engineers responded by altering the spacecraft's reentry into the atmosphere in a manner that, according to simulations, would lessen the shield's thermal load. This mission was the first time that new return path has been tried in flight.

 We'll have to wait for the full data to see how much the heating was reduced, but whatever the engineers decided clearly did its job of bringing the crew safely home.

 Anit Kshatriya, an associate administrator at Nasa, compared the precision of that angle to the 250,000-mile journey to the Moon during the press conference. He stated, "The team hit it; that is not luck; 1,000 people doing their jobs."

The Artemis programme aims to step up Moon exploration, land humans on the Moon for the first time since 1972, set up a permanent lunar base and aim for a crewed mission to Mars.

The next flight, Artemis III, has been redesigned under Nasa's new administrator Jared Isaacman to be an Earth-orbital mission to test rendezvous and docking with the SpaceX and Blue Origin lunar landers, and is pencilled in for mid-2027.

The first actual Moon landing - Artemis IV - is targeted for 2028, though there are doubts that target is achievable.

 Today's homecoming does not put boots on the Moon.  But it demonstrates that the hardware works, that the trajectory holds, and that the people are able to take it. The foundation has been laid.  But the hardest part is yet to come.

Source: BBC