Artemis II astronauts return home, ending record-breaking NASA mission around the moon

The four Artemis II astronauts are safely back on Earth after flying past the Moon on NASA’s first lunar mission in more than 50 years.

After a fiery journey through Earth’s atmosphere that lasted nearly 15 minutes, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego in their Orion capsule at 8:07 p.m. ET.

“Y’all, we did it,” Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said Friday during a post-landing press briefing. “We sent four extraordinary people to the Moon and returned them safely to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years.”

It was a perfect splashdown, with the capsule landing vertically under three huge parachutes as recovery teams rushed to the scene.

Minutes earlier, a six-minute communications outage with mission controllers ended the mission as the capsule plunged into Earth’s atmosphere.

Then, a very welcome appeal was broadcast over the airwaves.

“Houston, Integrity, we’ve got you loud and clear,” Wiseman radioed to the mission control center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, using the name “Integrity” the crew gave their spacecraft.

After recovery teams from NASA and the US Navy checked the area for debris and other hazardous materials, Artemis II crew members were helped out of the capsule one by one. Wiseman, the mission commander, was the last to exit.

The four astronauts were then transported by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha, a US Navy transport ship. Once on board, they underwent post-mission medical evaluations. Later Friday, the astronauts are expected to return to earth and fly to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the agency said.

The astronauts’ return marks the end of the 10-day mission, during which they flew past the Moon and became the first humans to see the entire dark side of the Moon with their own eyes. The crew was also the first to lift off aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule.

While circling the Moon, astronauts set a new record for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth: 252,756 miles. They surpassed the previous record of 248,655 miles set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970 during their emergency return to Earth.

During their lunar flyby, Artemis II crew members captured breathtaking photos of the far side of the Moon, including never-before-seen features of the lunar surface: rugged topography, countless craters, ridges, mountains and ancient lava plains. The far side of the Moon faces Earth at all times, and even most of the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s were unable to see the far side due to flight trajectories and timing.

Artemis II astronauts recorded observations of impact basins that formed billions of years ago when large objects slammed into the lunar surface, and studied irregular features along the moon’s terminator, the dividing line between its lighted and dark side.

NASA said the images will help scientists understand how the Moon formed and how its landscape has changed over time.

During the entire mission, the Artemis II astronauts flew a total of 700,237 miles, according to NASA Flight Director Rick Henfling. He added that their return to Earth was almost perfect, with the Orion capsule landing less than a mile from the targeted landing site and following a near-perfect flight path.

“What a great day,” Henfling said.

The successful completion of the Artemis II mission is a major relief for NASA, given previous concerns about the Orion capsule’s heat shield, the thermal protection layer at the bottom of the spacecraft that protects astronauts from extreme temperatures during atmospheric reentry.

Reentering Earth’s atmosphere is always a dangerous and risky part of human spaceflight, as a capsule plunging into the atmosphere can be exposed to temperatures of around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But the stakes were particularly high for the Artemis II mission because the Orion heat shield had a known flaw in its design.

During the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, NASA discovered that some of the heat shield material had cracked during re-entry, “causing some charred material to break off in several locations.” To minimize risks to Artemis II astronauts, NASA changed the capsule’s entry trajectory so that it descended faster and at a steeper angle to reduce the duration of exposure to the most extreme temperatures.

NASA said a full analysis would be conducted to evaluate the heat shield’s performance in the coming days after the Orion capsule arrives at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, said the Artemis II mission was a critical stepping stone to NASA’s goal of landing on the Moon in a future Artemis flight.

NASA aims to launch the next mission, Artemis III, in mid-2027 to perform technology demonstrations in low Earth orbit with one or both lunar landers built by SpaceX or Blue Origin. In 2028, the agency plans to launch the Artemis IV mission to land on the Moon.

“The path to the lunar surface is open, but the work ahead is more important than what lies ahead,” Kshatriya said. “It always will be. Fifty-three years ago, humanity left the Moon. This time, we’re coming back to stay.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com