The crew of Artemis 2 makes a triumphant splashdown at the end of mankind’s first orbit around the moon since 1972.

Four astronauts and their Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, bringing the first crewed round trip since 1972 to a successful end.

“What a trip!” Mission Commander Reid Wiseman said after the incident.

During their 10-day odyssey, NASA’s Artemis 2 mission team – Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission technician Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen – became the farthest travelers in history, gliding more than 4,000 miles past the far side of the moon. Koch is the first woman to go outside Earth orbit, Glover is the first black astronaut to do so, and Hansen is the first non-US astronaut to make such a trip.

The spacecraft tested the Artemis program hardware and procedures for sending astronauts all the way to the lunar surface by 2028, and building a permanent lunar base in the 2030s.

Orion’s hardware — including parts built in the Seattle area — came up where it counted. Two sets of Orion thrusters were built by L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne team in Redmond, Wash., while mechanisms by Karman Space & Defense in Mukilteo, Wash., aided the safe deployment of Orion’s parachutes in the mission’s final minutes.

NASA calculated that Orion traveled a total of 694,481 miles, from its launch aboard the Space Launch System’s largest rocket on April 1 to its splashdown off the coast of California at 5:07 pm PT.

The textbook concludes the history-making journey

The last hour of the mission happened as NASA had planned. After ejecting its European-built service module, the Orion crew module – dubbed Loyalty by astronauts – blasted into space at a speed of 24,661 mph. The re-entry shock created a shield of ionized plasma around the spacecraft that cut off communications for six minutes.

The crew endured G-forces up to 3.9 times Earth’s gravity — about what they felt during launch — and Orion’s heat shield endured temperatures of 4,000 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion’s descent route was designed to reduce stress on the heat shield, after NASA discovered that the heat shield of the previous lunar rover, Artemis 1, had exploded more than expected.

“This is a real test of our approach,” said NASA analyst Rob Navias.

Orion passed the test: “Houston, Integrity: We’ve got you loud and clear,” Wiseman told Mission Control when the blackout ended, prompting cheers from ground controllers.

The space shuttle’s parachutes were deployed thoughtfully, and Orion’s descent slowed to a speed of 19 mph when it hit the Pacific waters southwest of San Diego.

Moments later, Wiseman reported that all four astronauts were in good health. Orion’s airbags were filled with helium to help stabilize the floating ship.

“It was textbook work,” Navias said.

The rescue teams converged on the touchdown zone, interrupted by a glitch in the crew’s satellite phone connection. Mission Control was able to contact the crew by radio, however, and assisted with post-splashdown operations.

Looking back, looking forward

In the next few hours, the astronauts will be ejected from Orion and flown by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha, an amphibious dock ship that served as the lead ship in the rescue effort. After a medical examination, they will be brought ashore in San Diego and flown to the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Orion capsule will be towed back to the deck of the USS John P. Murtha for transport.

On board, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said he “couldn’t be prouder of all the employees” at the space station.

“Childhood Jared can’t believe what he just saw,” said Isaacman, who was born ten years after Apollo’s last moon walk in 1972. “I’ve probably been waiting my whole life to see this.

He promised that Artemis 2’s trip to the moon would not be a once-in-a-lifetime event. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We’re going to go back to doing this over and over again, sending astronauts to the moon until we get to it in 2028 and start building our base.”

Check back for updates on this growing story.