After a nearly 10-day journey that took the Artemis II astronauts around the moon, in front of an eclipse and farther away from Earth than any humans before them, the crew of four have made a dramatic return home.
The Artemis II astronauts share a group hug aboard the Orion capsule. hide caption
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were ensconced in the Orion space capsule when they dropped into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT Friday. The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone to help recover the crew.
Artemis II astronauts have just one task ahead of them today: Return home
To get back to Earth, the space capsule had to withstand predicted temperatures of about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit and slow down from nearly 25,000 miles per hour — or more than 30 times the speed of sound — to a gentle 19 mph or so before splashdown.
The roughly 13-minute journey from the top of the atmosphere to the surface is like "riding a fireball through the atmosphere," NASA astronaut and Artemis II crew member Victor Glover said before the maneuver.
But, he said, it's also a necessary one.
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"We have to get back," Glover said. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us."
The crew of four, who looped around the far side of the moon on Monday April 6, took photos and made observations as they passed over the lunar surface. The crew is set to bring that data and more back to the team on the ground.
Nell Greenfieldboyce and Central Florida Public Media's Brendan Byrne contributed to this report.
