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Splashdown! NASA's Artemis 1 Orion capsule lands in Pacific to end epic moon mission
An uncrewed Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean this afternoon (Dec. 11), bringing a successful end to NASA's historic Artemis 1 moon mission.
Science & Tech
An uncrewed Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California this afternoon (Dec. 11), bringing a successful end to NASA's historic Artemis 1 moon mission after a 1.4 million-mile (2.3 million kilometers) flight. The splashdown occurred 50 years to the day of NASA's Apollo 17 moon landing, the last astronaut mission to touch down on the lunar surface.
"Splashdown! From Tranquility Base to Taurus-Littrow to the tranquil waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of NASA's journey to the moon comes to a close: Orion back on Earth," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during the agency's livestream of the event on Sunday. (Tranquility Base and Taurus-Littrow were the landing sites of Apollo 11 and Apollo 17, the first and final Apollo moon landing missions, respectively.)
Artemis 1 was a shakeout cruise for Orion, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and their associated ground systems. Further analyses await, but early indications are that all of this gear passed the test with flying colors — meaning NASA can likely start gearing up for the first crewed Artemis flight, a round-the-moon effort in 2024.
A delayed but picture-perfect launch
NASA originally tried to launch Artemis 1 in late August, but several technical glitches, including a leak of liquid hydrogen propellant, pushed things back a month.
And then Mother Nature intervened. In late September, the Artemis 1 team rolled the SLS and Orion off Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to shelter from Hurricane Ian. The Artemis 1 stack stayed inside KSC's huge Vehicle Assembly Building for more than a month, getting some upgrade and repair work done during that stretch.
Team members rolled the rocket and capsule back out to the pad on Nov. 4, seemingly after the end of hurricane season. However, another big storm slammed into the Space Coast on Nov. 10 — Nicole, which hit Florida as a Category 1 hurricane but quickly weakened to a tropical storm.
SLS and Orion weathered Nicole on the launch pad, and did so in good shape; inspections soon revealed that both vehicles were ready for liftoff. That launch — the first ever for the SLS and the second for Orion, which flew to Earth orbit briefly in December 2014 — occurred on Nov. 16, and it was a sight to behold.
The SLS sent Orion aloft exactly as planned. The huge rocket generated 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, making it the most powerful launcher ever to fly successfully.
"The first launch of the Space Launch System rocket was simply eye-watering," Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin said in a statement (opens in new tab) on Nov. 30.