Crew members of NASA’s Artemis II moon mission returned to Earth.

Crew members of NASA’s Artemis II moon mission returned to Earth.

• Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere travelling 33 times the speed of sound – a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s.
• Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the plunge on automatic pilot.
• The tension in Mission Control mounted as the capsule became engulfed in red-hot plasma during peak heating and entered a planned communication blackout.
• The recovery ship, USS John P. Murtha, awaited the crew’s arrival off the San Diego coast, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters.
• During the 10-day Artemis II mission, the crew became the first humans to travel toward the moon in more than 50 years, and they set a new record for the farthest distance ever traveled from Earth.
• The astronauts were also the first to launch on NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket and to travel aboard the Orion spacecraft.
• Artemis II is part of the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon and pave the way for future missions to Mars.