TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The Artemis II mission came to an end Friday when the Orion spacecraft, carrying a four-person crew, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
Splashdown happened around 8 p.m. ET, and took place about 60 miles off the coast of San Diego.
The crew on board includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Jeremy Hansen with the Canadian Space Agency.
All eyes were on the capsule’s life-protecting heat shield that had to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. On the only other test flight of the spacecraft — in 2022, with no one on board — the shield’s charred exterior came back looking as pockmarked as the moon.
Orion was on track to hit the atmosphere traveling Mach 32 — or 32 times the speed of sound — a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s.
They didn’t plan on taking manual control except in an emergency. Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, is completely self-flying.
Another tense moment was the communication blackout, which lasted six minutes, preceding the moment the parachutes opened.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.