NASA's Artemis 2 mission successfully concluded with the Integrity Orion spacecraft splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California, at 8:07 p.m. ET. Over the course of 10 days, the mission covered a distance of 694,481 miles (1,117,659 kilometers) and included a historic flight around the Moon, marking a significant achievement for human space exploration.
During reentry, the spacecraft experienced intense conditions, falling at speeds exceeding 23,864 mph (38,405 kph). After a brief communication blackout, contact was reestablished with the crew as the capsule descended to an altitude of 22,000 feet (6,706 meters), where the drogue parachutes deployed, followed by the main parachutes at 6,000 feet (1,829 meters).
The Artemis 2 crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency, will soon be extracted from the capsule by recovery teams. After undergoing medical evaluations aboard the USS John P. Murtha, they will return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
This mission was notable as it was the first crewed test flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The crew also set a new record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by humans, surpassing the previous record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.