By Grant Warkentin
After a trip around the moon, and a near-flawless demonstration of the systems which will be used to land on Earth’s satellite in the near future, the Artemis II team is splashing down today.
Shortly after 5 pm local time, the capsule carrying four astronauts, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will land off the coast of San Diego in California.
The ten-day mission was the first time since 1972 that humans have been to the moon. It closely echoed the Apollo 8 mission, which was a crewed mission around the moon and back to make sure the rockets and modules were up to the job of getting human beings safely through deep space. Like Apollo 8, the knowledge gained in the Artemis II mission will be used for future crewed missions to the lunar surface in the coming years.
NASA plans to stay this time; the Artemis missions are incremental steps towards establishing a permanent, crewed base on the moon.
There were a few minor technical glitches during the mission, including malfunctioning toilets and Microsoft Outlook issues, but nothing critical. Watchers on the ground, including NASA veteran and “October Sky” author Homer Hickam, pointed out on social media the heat shielding in the uncrewed Artemis I mission was found to be insufficient. It was been enhanced for the Artemis II capsule, and will be crucial for protecting the crew when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed.
NASA is live-streaming the spashdown, it’s available on their YouTube channel, we have also embedded the stream below.
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