The Orion spacecraft landed safely off the coast of California at around 9pm this Friday (10)
After a ten-day trip around the Moon, the mission’s four astronauts Artemis II returned to Earth this Friday (10). They began re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere at around 8:56 pm and landed at 9:07 pm, off the coast of California, in the United States. The moment they entered the Earth interface, they lost contact with NASA, however, communication returned at 9:02 pm.
The speed for entering Earth was approximately 40,000 km/h. Astronauts are now waiting in the water to be lifted by helicopter, a procedure that must take place within an hour.
The arrival of crew members Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen back to Earth was considered one of the most critical stages of the entire journey. In addition to absolute precision, the Orion spacecraft and crew had to face extreme conditions.
Orion’s heat shield required withstand temperatures of up to 2,700 °C generated by friction with the atmosphere. “Passing through the atmosphere like a ball of fire” will be a remarkable experience, confessed pilot Victor Glover at the beginning of the week, admitting that he had been apprehensive since being selected for the crew in 2023.
For 13 minutes — six of them without communication with Earth —, the capsule hit 38 mil km/h before being slowed down by a parachute sequence e land in the ocean. The astronauts’ families were able to follow the operation in real time at the NASA control center in Houston.
Start of the journey
A Artemis II Mission launched on April 1 a group of astronauts to the Moon’s orbit. The trip marked the return to Earth’s natural satellite after 53 yearswhen the Apollo 17 missionin December 1972.
The takeoff took place from Florida, in the United States, at around 6:35 pm local time (7:35 pm in Brasília), at which time the spacecraft was launched at full speed towards the Moon, without landingin a mission similar to that carried out by Apollo 8, in 1968. The team remained in mission for 10 days.
This was the first manned flight of NASA’s new lunar rocket, called SLSdesigned to allow the United States to return to the natural satellite on a recurring basis in the coming years.
Mission arrived at the back of the Moon
Last Monday (6) the four astronauts were able to pass through the back of the Moon and were without connection to Earth for 40 minutes. The communication outage was already predicted. “We’ll see you on the other side,” said astronaut Victor Glover, minutes before communication was lost. The communication outage occurred around 7:40 pm and returned at 8:20 pm (Brasília time). Contact was reestablished around 8:27 p.m.
“We will always choose Earth, we will always choose each other”, said astronaut Christina Koch, in her first statements after the predicted signal interruption during the spacecraft’s passage over the far side of the Moon. “When I turned on the engines towards the Moon, I said that we were not leaving Earth, and that is true”, he declared.
With the passage behind the satellite, the crew completed the trip around the Moon. The mission had the objective of documenting features of the Moon that were previously known only from photographs taken by robots. Overflight that lasted around six hours.
The mission also marked the milestone, on Monday, of the first astronauts to fly further from Earth. The team beat the previous record of 400,171 km, set by the Apollo 13 mission in the 1970s. It is expected that, during today, this mission will surpass the previous mark by more than 6,600 km, reaching a distance of 406,778 km.
Purpose of Artemis II
Artemis II’s objectives included verifying that both the SLS moon rocket and the Orion spacecraft were in perfect working order, in hopes of pave the way for a return and moon landing in 2028.
This deadline arouses skepticism among experts, in part because depends on technological advances in the private sector. Astronauts will need a second vehicle to descend to the lunar surfacea landing module that is still in development by rival space companiesbelonging to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Meanwhile, the tens of billions of dollars mission seeks to rekindle the enthusiasm of Americans by space exploration. As Commander Reid Wiseman summarized this week, the crew hoped to “allow, if only for a moment, the world to pause.”
*With information from AFP
