An elated Nasa late Friday was celebrating its successful voyage around the Moon, after four astronauts safely returned to Earth having completed the first lunar flyby in more than 50 years.
The Nasa spacecraft carrying four astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — splashed down without a hitch off the California coast, capping the US space agency’s crewed test mission that returned with spectacular images of the Moon.
“What a journey,” said mission commander Reid Wiseman, who reported that the crewmembers — himself along with Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen — were “stable” and “green”.
“They’re in great condition, that’s what that means,” said Rob Navias, the Nasa public affairs official who narrated their return on the agency’s livestream.
Following an expected but nerve-wracking communications blackout during their high-stakes re-entry, Wiseman’s voice triggered relief that the astronauts were well on their way back home.
“We have you loud and clear,” he said following a voice check from mission control in Houston.
Nasa personnel and the US military helped extract the astronauts from the bobbing capsule — to the applause of those watching from mission control.
By late Friday, helicopters had lifted the astronauts to a recovery ship off the Pacific coast near San Diego, where they all proved capable of walking unassisted.
Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman called the voyage “a perfect mission.”
“We’re back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon,” he said, and “this is just the beginning.”
The Artemis II re-entry was smooth sailing.
The Orion capsule will now be painstakingly examined to assess how it fared.
US President Donald Trump praised the astronauts for their “spectacular” trip and said he “could not be more proud” — while wasting no time in looking ahead to the eventual goal of sending missions even further into space.
“Next step, Mars!” he wrote on social media.
Artemis II was the inaugural crewed mission of Nasa’s programme aiming to install a sustained presence on the Moon, including the eventual construction of a base that could be used for further exploration including to Mars.
Nasa is hoping it can put boots on the lunar surface as soon as 2028 — the final full year of Trump’s second White House term.
Experts, however, have voiced scepticism that the lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin, companies owned by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos respectively, will be ready in time.