NASA's Orion capsule splashes down, completing the first Artemis moon mission

NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down successful the Pacific Ocean disconnected the seashore of Baja California, Mexico connected Sunday, completing the agency's Artemis 1 mission.

Just nether 26 days since Artemis 1 launched connected NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, its astir almighty ever, the capsule is back. Coming into Earth's ambiance astatine a adjacent 25,000 miles per hour, the aggravated reentry process marked the last measurement successful the agency's archetypal lunar mission.

"This is the infinitesimal of information for Orion," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said connected the agency's unrecorded webcast, speaking from ngo power successful Houston, arsenic the capsule began reentry.

"America's caller summons to thrust to the satellite and beyond," Navias said later.

Orion completed a brace of near passes supra the moon's surface during the missions, representing an end-to-end trial of the strategy that NASA hopes volition instrumentality astronauts to the aboveground of the satellite successful the adjacent fewer years.

While nary astronauts were onboard Artemis 1, the astir month-long travel astir the satellite is simply a captious objection for NASA's lunar program.

The ngo represents a important inflection constituent successful NASA's satellite plans, with the programme delayed for years and moving billions of dollars implicit budget. The Artemis programme represents a bid of missions with escalating goals. The 3rd – tentatively scheduled for 2025 – is expected to instrumentality astronauts to the lunar aboveground for the archetypal clip since the Apollo era.