Plunging through the atmosphere at over 30 times the speed of sound, NASA’s Orion spacecraft streaked over the Pacific on Friday, bringing four astronauts back and successfully concluding humanity’s first Moon mission in almost 54 years.
Surface temperatures rose to roughly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as a shell of plasma surrounded the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, and its four far-traveling crew, briefly disrupting radio contact between the lunar craft and Mission Control in Houston. Heading from southwest to northeast, the vehicle aimed for a splashdown area southwest of San Diego, where a US Navy recovery vessel waited for the crew’s return. After a six-minute communications blackout, ground teams reestablished contact with Orion commander Reid Wiseman.
Airborne tracking aircraft relayed live footage of Orion’s return to Mission Control, capturing the capsule shedding its parachute cover and releasing a sequence of canopies to steady its drop toward the Pacific. Finally, three primary main chutes — each about 10,500 square feet — inflated to slow Orion for splashdown at 8:07 pm EDT Friday (00:07 UTC Saturday).
Over the course of 14 minutes, Orion shed nearly 25,000 mph of speed, exposing the crew in their seats to two short bursts of roughly 3.9 Gs.
The USS John P. Murtha, an amphibious transport dock, sent helicopters and small craft to recover Wiseman and his Artemis II crewmates — Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Wiseman radioed that there were “four green crew members” inside Orion’s cockpit, signaling they were healthy and in good spirits following splashdown.
Koch was the first to leave the capsule, climbing onto an inflatable raft — the so-called “front porch” — alongside Navy divers gathered beside the spacecraft. Glover followed, and then Hansen, the Canadian astronaut, stepped onto the front porch. Wiseman, the ship’s commander, was the last to unbuckle and join the recovery team. Two helicopters were scheduled to lift the astronauts from the water and carry them to the John P. Murtha, where medical teams would check them before they were flown to San Diego and then back to Houston to reunite with their families on Saturday.
