WATCH NASA’S LIVE COVERAGE OF ORION’S RETURN TO EARTH
NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby.
The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) before splashing down west of Baja California near Guadalupe Island. A Navy ship quickly moved in to recover the spacecraft and its silent occupants -- three test dummies rigged with vibration sensors and radiation monitors.
Read more from the Associated Press here.
Earlier report follows:
NASA says the Artemis I moon rocket Orion is set to conclude its test flight around the moon on Sunday with a splashdown.
According to CNN, the spacecraft finished the final stretch of its journey after traversing at least 239,000 miles between the moon and Earth.
The splashdown is scheduled for 11:40 a.m. Houston time in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja California coast. It was originally scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego, but the weather was not compatible with the criteria.
NASA’s Orion capsule and its test dummies hurtled toward Earth on Sunday to end a 25-day test flight around the moon.
Flight controllers targeted a splashdown in the Pacific just off the coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. A Navy recovery ship was positioned within a few miles (kilometers) of the intended site.
Orion rocketed to the moon from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16 and spent nearly a week in a wide, swooping lunar orbit, before heading home. The $4 billion demo should allow astronauts to strap in for the next lunar flyby in a couple of years.
Orion’s super fast and hot return coincided with the 50th anniversary of humanity’s last lunar landing, by Apollo 17′s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on Dec. 11, 1972. This was the first capsule to visit the moon since then.
NASA’s Apollo landed 12 astronauts on the moon. Under this new Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, astronauts could be back on the lunar surface as early as 2025.
Artemis I is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that enables human exploration to the Moon and Mars, according to NASA. During the flight, the spacecraft (currently Orion), will travel up to 280,000 miles from Earth and thousands of miles beyond the moon. To read more, click here.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.