NASA officials highlighted Friday the key role of the technical teams after the success of the Artemis II mission and stressed that “the road to the Moon is moving forward”, although “the challenges ahead will be greater”.
Artemis II on Friday completed a 10-day mission that lifted off from Florida on April 1, during which it orbited the moon without landing on the moon, marking the return of astronauts to its vicinity for the first time since 1972, in the era of the Apollo program.
NASA celebrates the return of Artemis II
After the return of the capsule with the four astronauts, the agency’s associate administrator, Amit Kshatriya, highlighted the role of the teams that made the mission possible at a press conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“You’ll hear from the astronauts tomorrow, but tonight belongs to the team that built the machine they rode in,” he said as he acknowledged the work of engineers, technicians, flight controllers and recovery personnel involved in the project.
Kshatriya maintained that “the path to the lunar surface is still open” after this passage and that “the work ahead is greater than what has already been accomplished.”
“Apollo accomplished amazing things and since then we’ve done amazing things, but this one I think will be an important step and I hope history will recognize our work,” he added.
Meanwhile, Artemis program manager Lori Glaze celebrated the crew’s safe return, noted that the mission marks the beginning of a new phase and said the astronauts will return to Houston on Saturday.
“We sent four people to the Moon and brought them back to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years,” he noted.
Glaze added that this mission is just the beginning and called for continued attention to the next steps of the program, noting that it will be “the first of many” expeditions.
For his part, flight director Rick Henfling highlighted the technical results of the mission, which covered more than 700,000 miles (1.13 million kilometers), reached a maximum speed of 24,664 miles per hour (about 39,700 km/h) and had an entry range of 1,957 miles (about 3,150 kilometers), although it splashed down less than a mile (less than 1.6 kilometers) from the planned point.
“It was a truly spectacular day for NASA and all of our international partners,” he said.
Henfling said the Artemis II astronauts are “happy, healthy and ready to return to Houston”.
Likewise, the head of NASA’s exploration ground systems program, Shawn Quinn, celebrated the mission’s outcome by stating that “it’s good to be NASA, it’s good to be an American today.”
Agency officials noted that extensive data on the Orion capsule’s heat shield was collected during the mission.
The head of the program, Howard Hu, indicated that heat shield specialists are already on the recovery vessel to analyze its condition.
They also noted that a leak was detected in the pressure control system, which will be investigated, while the communications blackout during reentry, caused by the plasma surrounding the spacecraft, occurred within expected parameters.
The crew, consisting of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen, completed the mission after a smooth liftoff from Cape Canaveral, conditions that were repeated Friday in the Pacific off the coast of San Diego, where the capsule splashed down on its return.
The mission is part of the U.S. return to manned lunar exploration: “The United States is back to sending astronauts to the Moon and bringing them back safely,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said after splashdown about this test mission of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, designed to test the agency’s lunar exploration system.
Filed under: NASA celebrates the return of Artemis II.
With information from EFE
