Crew members of NASA’s Artemis II moon mission returned to Earth

Crew members of NASA’s Artemis II moon mission returned to Earth

¨     Crew members of NASA’s Artemis II moon mission returned to Earth

¨  Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere travelling 33 times the speed of sound – a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s.

¨     Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the plunge on automatic pilot.

¨     The tension in Mission Control mounted as the capsule became engulfed in red-hot plasma during peak heating and entered a planned communication blackout.

¨   The recovery ship, USS John P. Murtha, awaited the crew’s arrival off the San Diego coast, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters.

¨    During the 10-day Artemis II mission, the crew became the first humans to travel toward the moon in more than 50 years, and they set a new record for the farthest distance ever traveled from Earth.

¨  The astronauts were also the first to launch on NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket and to travel aboard the Orion spacecraft.

¨   Artemis II is part of the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon and pave the way for future missions to Mars.