The four-member crew of Artemis II are on their last trip back to Earth, having made the first crewed mission around the Moon in over 50 years. The astronauts embarked on their high-speed trip back in NASA spacecraft Orion on Friday and hope to land in Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California.
The dramatic finale of the mission involves the detachment of the crew capsule and its service module, and then it burns up as it re-enters the atmosphere of the earth. This stage will see the spacecraft withstand extreme temperatures before a short communication outage of about six minutes. After re-entry, the capsule will deploy parachutes to help safely land in the ocean.
NASA astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch as well as the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are supposed to land safely near San Diego. They took off on April 1 at Cape Canaveral and flew on the powerful Space Launch System rocket that carried them not only beyond the orbit of the Earth, but circle the far side of the Moon.
This mission is a historic one, this is the first time a human lunar flights have taken place since Apollo. It also made history with the first Black astronaut, first woman and first non-American to be a part of a lunar mission. Artemis II is a vital step in the long-term aspirations of NASA to send humans to the Moon again and ultimately to Mars after the successful launch of Artemis I in 2022.