ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA chased down the Orion spacecraft after its record-breaking reentry into Earth’s atmosphere Sunday to conclude the Artemis I mission that lifted off from Kennedy Space Center more than three weeks ago.
“And there it is, high over the Pacific, America’s new ticket to ride to the moon and beyond now in view,” said Rob Navias with NASA communications as the first images emerged of the capsule descending under three unfurled main parachutes 1,000 feet in the air.
It hit the water slowed to only 19 mph at 12:40 p.m. after 25 days, 10 hours, 54 minutes and 50 seconds in space. Only 20 minutes earlier, Orion had hit the atmosphere at a reported 24,464 mph, which is faster than any previous human-rated spacecraft.
“Splashdown. From Tranquility Base to Taurus–Littrow to the tranquil waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of NASA’s journey to the moon comes to a close — Orion back on Earth,” Navias said referencing the landing sites of Apollo 11 and Apollo 17, the first and last human landings on the moon. Sunday happened to be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17′s touchdown on Dec. 11, 1972.
“This is a defining day,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It is one that marks new technology, a whole new breed of astronaut, a vision for the future that captures that DNA, of particularly Americans, although we do this as an international venture, and that DNA is: We are adventurers. We are explorers. We always have a frontier. And that frontier is now to continue exploring the heavens.”
Recovery teams led by KSC’s Exploration Ground Systems were on hand to welcome back the uncrewed Orion capsule after landing near Guadalupe Island off the coast of Baja California, south of San Diego. After several hours in the water, teams loaded the capsule aboard the USS Portland for a trip back to San Diego.
Orion will be transported by truck to KSC with an arrival expected before the end of the year so it can undergo testing and also have parts removed to be reused on the Orion capsule for the next mission.
“Splashdown today is really the beginning of the journey back to KSC,” said KSC Director Janet Petro. “We think that’s going to be a really great Christmas present for us here. ... So the journey isn’t over. It’s just kind of making its way here here on the terrestrial path back.”
The primary goal of Artemis I was to ensure Orion’s heat shied could withstand the temperatures generated by reentry and open the door for NASA to proceed with Artemis II with humans on board. Readings showed the interior of the capsule was at 60 degrees Fahrenheit at landing, and early reports show little damage to the exterior.
Artemis II, which aims to send four astronauts on another orbital moon flight, is officially slated for no earlier than May 2024, but NASA officials on Sunday indicated it would be around two years from Artemis I.
That would then be followed by Artemis III no earlier than 2025, which would return humans — including the first woman — to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17′s astronauts left the surface on Dec. 14, 1972.
Ahead of reentry, Orion had performed its sixth and final return trajectory correction burn to ensure it headed to the correct landing site. At noon, Orion at about 3,200 miles altitude separated from the European Service Module that had been providing propulsion during its trip around the moon and back.
At 12:20 p.m., Orion then began to carve its way through the atmosphere at about 400,000 feet altitude and 3,659 miles from the target landing site making it away across the South Pacific Ocean.
“Orion will dip into the Earth’s atmosphere and begin what basically is a hellish entry where temperatures around the spacecraft will raise to about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit,” Navias said. “That’s half as hot as the outer surface of the sun.”
The dip maneuver was similar to skipping a rock on a pond, Navias said. It slowed the spacecraft down further ahead of its parachute-assisted landing and recovery by a fleet of vessels that had been readying for Orion’s arrival since last week.
“Flight dynamics reports Orion straight and narrow on a true course to its splashdown site,” Navias said with video images showing the cloudy skies of Earth from the capsule’s point of view shown on NASA’s livestream being watched by nearly 250,000 people.
Both Orion and the Space Launch System rocket that brought it into space have been ticking off NASA’s checkboxes for mission objectives on its 1.4-million-mile trip.
“The whole vehicle — the rocket, the European participation in the support module, the spacecraft itself Orion — performing so well that they added a lot of tests, and lo and behold, we’re going to be up to our ears in data, thankfully,” Nelson said.
Orion became the record holder for human-rated spacecraft flying to more than 268,000 miles away from Earth during a distant retrograde orbit of the moon, and SLS became the most powerful rocket to ever make it into space when it blasted off from KSC on Nov. 16, generating 8.8 million pounds of thrust in an overnight launch that lit up the Space Coast.
The first SLS flight was originally targeted for 2016 after the program was announced in 2012, but cost overruns and delays from COVID-19, hurricane threats and manufacturing complexities kept pushing the target launch window to 2022. NASA then had to plow through a bevy of launch pad fueling snafus during testing and launch attempts as well as the interpolation of both Hurricanes Ian and Nicole before finally making it off the ground.
Once in the air, though, the mission plan proceeded without any serious issues so that NASA now has a flight-proven rocket to support its deep-space plans, including a goal of sending the first human to Mars by 2040.
“It’s a new day,” Nelson said. “A new day has dawned, and Artemis generation is taking us there.”
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