TIMELINE: Artemis II returns to earth as NASA astronauts complete historic Moon mission

After 10 days and a history making mission to the Moon, the four astronauts aboard Artemis II returned to Earth Friday night, ending their journey with a splashdown off the coast of San Diego.

This is a timeline from the Artemis II mission from start to finish, including highlights from challenges in deep space they faced, and discoveries made along the way around the moon and back.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere traveling Mach 33, or 33 times the speed of sound, a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s. Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the plunge on autopilot.

All eyes were on the capsule's life-protecting heat shield that had to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. On the spacecraft’s only other test flight, in 2022, with no one on board, the shield’s charred exterior came back looking as pockmarked as the moon.

The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha awaited the crew’s arrival off the San Diego coast, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters, while the astronauts' families watched from Mission Control's viewing room.

Artemis II lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1, renewing global interest in space exploration and marking a major step toward establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

#artemisii #moonmission #nasa #longformvideo #spaceexploration #orion #integrity #nationalnews #spacenews #moon #space #travel #artemis #splashdown

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