NASA’s Artemis II crew back on Earth after 10-day lunar mission
NASA’s Artemis II crew have successfully completed a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, at 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 p.m. PDT) on Friday. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen – have been safely extracted from the Orion spacecraft after a 10-day journey to the Moon.
Engineers will conduct several additional tests while Orion is in the water before powering down the spacecraft and handing it over to the recovery team aboard the USS John P. Murtha, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement on Saturday early morning. The recovery team is on site and headed to the capsule to begin assisting the crew out of Orion.
Orion has begun crew module power down, a planned post-splashdown step in which flight controllers shut down nonessential systems and transition the capsule into its recovery configuration.
This reduces power demand and prepares the spacecraft for crew extraction as recovery teams move in, according to the statement. At the direction of the NASA recovery director, team members from the agency and the US military now are approaching the spacecraft in inflatable boats.
Approximately an hour after splashdown, the crew will be extracted from Orion and then flown to the USS John P. Murtha. U.S. Navy helicopters will then transport them to the ship. Once aboard, the astronauts will undergo post-mission medical evaluations before returning to shore to board an aircraft bound for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
When ready, Navy divers will attach a cable, called the winch line, to Orion to pull the spacecraft into a specially designed cradle inside the ship’s well deck. Four additional tending lines will be secured to attachment points on the crew module while under tow.
Once Orion is positioned above the cradle assembly, technicians will drain the well deck and secure the capsule. At 2:53 p.m. EDT, the Orion spacecraft ignited its thrusters for 8 seconds, producing a change in velocity of 4.2 feet-per-second and pushing Artemis II toward Earth, the statement added.
