Following a successful unmanned mission around the Moon, the Orion space spacecraft splashed down safely into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday. This marked the end of the Artemis 1 mission, a 25-day journey with the goal of sending and returning humans to and from the moon in a few years.
The capsule traveled at a speed of 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) per hour into the Earth’s atmosphere. It was then seen floating in the water with the assistance of three enormous orange and white parachutes off the coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.
“I don’t think any one of us could have imagined the mission this successful,” said Artemis Mission Manager Mike Sarafin in a press conference. “We now have a foundational deep space transportation system.”
The gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule contained a sensor-equipped mannequin crew
The gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule contained a mannequin crew of three sensor-equipped mannequins. A US military helicopter and a group of speed boats arrived at the capsule for a five-hour inspection before it is placed aboard a US Naval vessel for a trip to San Diego, California. Orion traveled more than a million miles further from Earth than any previous habitable spaceship.
“For years, thousands of individuals have poured themselves into this mission, which is inspiring the world to work together to reach untouched cosmic shores,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Today is a huge win for NASA, the United States, our international partners, and all of humanity,” he added.
During the mission, the capsule soared fewer than 80 miles over the moon’s surface in a lunar fly-by. It also traveled roughly 270,000 miles (434,500 km) from Earth to its farthest point in space.
While entering the Earth’s atmosphere, the capsule must sustain a temperature of 2,800 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit), roughly half that of the Sun’s surface. The mission’s principal purpose was to test Orion’s heat shield in preparation for the day when it will carry astronauts.
On November 16, the capsule took out from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was perched atop NASA’s colossal next-generation Space Launch System (SLS), the world’s most powerful rocket and the largest NASA has produced since the Saturn V of the Apollo period.
Orion’s voyage will be a stepping stone for future missions
The first SLS-Orion voyage launched Apollo’s successor program, Artemis, and served as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars. Data from the Artemis I mission will now be examined by mission engineers. A crewed Artemis II journey around the moon and back might happen as early as 2024, followed by the program’s first lunar landing of astronauts, one of whom will be a woman, with Artemis III in a few years.
