Artemis II Astronauts Back on Earth Following Historic Lunar Mission

Having departed Earth via the immense power of the Space Launch System rocket, then whizzing past the Moon and setting a distance record in the process, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen came back to Earth on board the Orion spacecraft 'Integrity' on April 10th.

In the lead-up to reentry to Earth's atmosphere, three brief trajectory correction maneuvers were performed by the European Service Module to align a 'bullseye' off the coast of San Diego, California, in the Pacific Ocean. A few hundred miles ahead of the atmosphere, Orion's capsule separated from the European Service Module after an almost 694,481-mile (1,117,659-kilometer) journey together.

Flying free for the first time, the capsule performed final fine-tune adjustments to its path home to Earth, then hitting the atmosphere at thirty-five times the speed of sound. Reentry into Earth's atmosphere lasted about seven minutes, with the heat shield ensuring Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen were safe throughout. All three sets of parachutes deployed perfectly, allowing for a picture-perfect splashdown to conclude the Artemis II mission after nine days, one hour, thirty-two minutes, and fifteen seconds.

Following splashdown, the four astronauts were extracted from Orion and taken to the USS John P. Murtha. for post-mission medical checks. In the hours after this article is released, they will be taken ashore and eventually back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

During the Artemis II mission, Victor Glover became the first person of colour to reach lunar space, while Christina Koch was the first woman to do so, and Jeremy Hansen was the first non-American.

During the reentry of 'Integrity', astronauts on board the International Space Station were on the lookout for the spacecraft. American astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Christopher Williams, along with France's Sophie Adenot, huddled into the cupola to do so. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Mikayev, and Andrey Fedyaev are presumed to have kept a lookout from their end of the station. The seven on the station likely got a brief glimpse of reentry from several hundred miles away, while taikonauts Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang had an even shorter window to see Orion due to the Tiangong Space Station's path on orbit.

With the Artemis II crew safely on Earth, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman took to social media to write:

"America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon and bringing them home safely. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy did an outstanding job. ... This was a test mission, the first crewed flight of SLS and Orion, pushing farther into the unforgiving environment of space than ever before, and it carried real risk. They accepted that risk for all we stood to learn and for the exciting missions that follow, as we return to the lunar surface, build a Moon base, and prepare for what comes next."