Artemis II’s grand moon finale is almost here with a Pacific splashdown to cap NASA’s lunar comeback

Their dra­mat­ic grand fi­nale fast ap­proach­ing, Artemis II’s as­tro­nauts aimed for a splash­down in the Pa­cif­ic on Fri­day to close out hu­man­i­ty’s first voy­age to the moon in more than a half-cen­tu­ry.

The ten­sion in Mis­sion Con­trol mount­ed as the miles melt­ed away be­tween the four re­turn­ing as­tro­nauts and Earth.

All eyes were on the cap­sule’s life-pro­tect­ing heat shield that has to with­stand thou­sands of de­grees dur­ing reen­try. On the space­craft’s on­ly oth­er test flight — in 2022, with no one on board — the shield’s charred ex­te­ri­or came back look­ing as pock­marked as the moon.

Com­man­der Reid Wise­man, pi­lot Vic­tor Glover, Christi­na Koch and Cana­da’s Je­re­my Hansen were on track to hit the at­mos­phere trav­el­ing Mach 32 — or 32 times the speed of sound — a blis­ter­ing blur not seen since NASA’s Apol­lo moon­shots of the 1960s and 1970s.

They didn’t plan on tak­ing man­u­al con­trol ex­cept in an emer­gency. Their Ori­on cap­sule, dubbed In­tegri­ty, is com­plete­ly self-fly­ing.

Like so many oth­ers, lead flight di­rec­tor Jeff Ra­di­gan an­tic­i­pat­ed feel­ing some of that “ir­ra­tional fear that is hu­man na­ture,” es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the six min­utes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion black­out pre­ced­ing the open­ing of the para­chutes. The re­cov­ery ship USS John P. Murtha await­ed the crew’s ar­rival off the coast of San Diego, along with a squadron of mil­i­tary planes and he­li­copters.

The last time NASA and the De­fense De­part­ment teamed up for a lu­nar crew’s reen­try was Apol­lo 17 in 1972. Artemis II was pro­ject­ed to come scream­ing back at 34,965 feet (10,657 me­ters) per sec­ond — or 23,840 mph (38,367 kph) — not a record but still mind-bog­gling­ly fast be­fore slow­ing to a 19 mph (30 kph) splash­down.

Artemis II’s record fly­by and views of the moon

Launched from Flori­da on April 1, the as­tro­nauts racked up one win af­ter an­oth­er as they deft­ly nav­i­gat­ed NASA’s long-await­ed lu­nar come­back, the first ma­jor step in es­tab­lish­ing a sus­tain­able moon base.

Artemis II didn’t land on the moon or even or­bit it. But it broke Apol­lo 13’s dis­tance record and marked the far­thest that hu­mans have ever jour­neyed from Earth when the crew reached 252,756 miles (406,771 kilo­me­tres). Then in the mis­sion’s most heart-tug­ging scene, the teary as­tro­nauts asked per­mis­sion to name a pair of craters af­ter their moon­ship and Wise­man’s late wife, Car­roll.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s record-break­ing fly­by, they doc­u­ment­ed scenes of the moon’s far side nev­er seen be­fore by the hu­man eye along with a to­tal so­lar eclipse. The eclipse, in par­tic­u­lar, “just blew all of us away,” Glover said.

Their sense of won­der and love awed every­one, as did their breath­tak­ing pic­tures of the moon and Earth. The Artemis II crew chan­nelled Apol­lo 8’s first lu­nar ex­plor­ers with Earth­set, show­ing our Blue Mar­ble set­ting be­hind the grey moon. It was rem­i­nis­cent of Apol­lo 8’s fa­mous Earth­rise shot from 1968.

“It just makes you want to con­tin­ue to go back,” Ra­di­gan said on the eve of splash­down. “It’s the first of many trips and we just need to con­tin­ue on be­cause there’s so much” more to learn about the moon.

Their moon­shot drew glob­al at­ten­tion as well as star pow­er, earn­ing props from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump; Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney; Britain’s King Charles III; Ryan Gosling, star of the lat­est space flick “Project Hail Mary”; Scar­lett Jo­hans­son of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse; and even Cap­tain Kirk him­self, William Shat­ner of TV’s orig­i­nal “Star Trek.”

Artemis II was a test flight for fu­ture moon mis­sions

De­spite its rich sci­en­tif­ic yield, the near­ly 10-day flight was not with­out tech­ni­cal is­sues. Both the cap­sule’s drink­ing wa­ter and pro­pel­lant sys­tems were hit with valve prob­lems. In per­haps the most high-pro­file predica­ment, the toi­let kept mal­func­tion­ing, but the as­tro­nauts shrugged it all off.

“We can’t ex­plore deep­er un­less we are do­ing a few things that are in­con­ve­nient,” Koch said, “un­less we’re mak­ing a few sac­ri­fices, un­less we’re tak­ing a few risks, and those things are all worth it.”

Added Hansen: “You do a lot of test­ing on the ground, but your fi­nal test is when you get this hard­ware to space and it’s a doozy.”

Un­der the re­vamped Artemis pro­gram, next year’s Artemis III will see as­tro­nauts prac­tice dock­ing their cap­sule with a lu­nar lan­der or two in or­bit around Earth. Artemis IV will at­tempt to land a crew of two near the moon’s south pole in 2028.

The Artemis II as­tro­nauts’ al­le­giance was to those fu­ture crews, Wise­man said.

“But we re­al­ly hoped in our soul is that we could for just for a mo­ment have the world pause and re­mem­ber that this is a beau­ti­ful plan­et and a very spe­cial place in our uni­verse, and we should all cher­ish what we have been gift­ed,” he said. —HOUS­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by MAR­CIA DUNN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press