The . Ten days and more than a million kilometers after leaving Earth, the four astronauts, near San Diego, California, according to what was planned by the US space agency, which has described the mission as “historic”, in the first appearance of its main technical managers before the press after the return of the crew.
In a statement full of allusions to the historic Apollo space program, Amit Kshatriya, associate administrator of the space agency, has condensed the United States’ plan after Artemis 2: “53 years ago, humanity left the Moon, this time we returned to stay. Let’s finish what they started and let’s focus on what was left pending… We are not going to plant flags and leave, but to stay,” he said at a press conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The four crew members of the Artemis 2 mission have managed to break several records: the ship carried the first woman to orbit the Moon, Christina Koch, the first African American, Victor Glover, and the first person from outside the United States, the Canadian Jeremy Hansen. The three, along with the commander, Reid Wiseman, have become the humans who have traveled the furthest, completing a journey of almost 10 days that took them to 406,800 kilometers from Earth, at its furthest point. They have also been the first to observe some areas of the Moon with their own eyes. During the mission, they traveled a total of 1,117,800 kilometers, during which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion’s perspective. The director of the entry flight at the agency, Rick Henfling, has given more figures: the ship Integrity and his crew reached a maximum speed of almost 40,000 kilometers per hour and landed less than a mile (about 1,600 kilometers) from the planned point.
NASA has assured that the four astronauts are fine. The commander, Reid Wiseman, confirmed it from the capsule: “What a trip. We are stable. Four crew members in green.” The crew is expected to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. “They are happy and healthy, ready to come home,” Henfling said.
The first manned mission to the Moon in more than half a century has also tested the critical systems of the Orion spacecraft and its operation in deep space, especially providing oxygen and drinking water, as well as communications, thermal control and the European Service Module, the contribution of the European Space Agency, which provided electricity to the Orion spacecraft.
and how it was going to withstand re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, was one of the biggest concerns for Artemis 2 after the damage it suffered in 2022, on the Artemis 1 unmanned mission. After landing, the team has assured that it has collected data to thoroughly analyze its operation, and several divers took photographs in situ. “We all breathed a sigh of relief once the side hatch opened, then turned to the families and waved as each of the astronauts exited the spacecraft and were taken to the helicopters,” Rick Henfling explained.
Amit Kshatriya has especially highlighted the work of the engineers in this reentry: “Yesterday, flight director Jeff Radigan said that we had less than one degree of angle to hit, after a quarter of a million miles to the Moon. And his team did it. That’s not luck, that’s a thousand people doing their job.”
Howard Hu, director of the Orion program, was moved during the appearance, remembering that as a child he was a fan of Star Warsand that yesterday was a thousand times better than any movie. “And I hope children who are in love with space exploration are inspired by us, especially our crew,” he said.
The Artemis program is the United States’ attempt to return to the Moon before China arrives, and establish a base in cooperation with Russia in the next decade. The success of Artemis 2 inaugurates, this time as part of that ambitious long-term plan to exploit lunar and terrestrial resources as a platform to reach Mars, the great objective of human space exploration, according to the agency. The next step, scheduled for 2028, will be Artemis 3, the next unmanned mission in the program that will test Orion’s docking capacity with landers designed by private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin. The space agency hopes to land on the moon starting in 2028 with the Artemis 4 mission.
