The world woke up to phenomenal news: All four astronauts who participated in NASA's ten-day Artemis II mission to fly around the moon, taking them farther into space than any humans had ever been before, have returned safely to earth, splashing down within a mile of their intended landing target in the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA.
The reentry
The first major point of anxiety came with reentry into Earth's atmosphere, which CNN described as the riskiest part of the mission.
In a pre-landing blog post, NASA reporters Abby Graf and Joseph Zakrzewski described the challenges of reentry, beginning with the structural integrity of the ship itself.
Traveling more than 24,000 miles per hour (40,000 km/h), the spaceship compresses the air in front of it, creating a plasma fireball with temperatures of up to 2,700 Celsius or 4,892 Fahrenheit, roughly half the surface temperature of our sun.
Meanwhile, inside the ship, crew members experience the rapid deceleration as a huge increase in gravitational force, making them feel almost four times heavier than they would on the Earth's surface, according to former astronaut Chris Hadfield.
The NASA livestream of the Artemis II return, watched by more than 20 million people worldwide, reached peak tension during reentry, when for six whole minutes the extreme temperatures made all communication with the crew impossible, leaving not only mission control but also viewers holding their breath.
It was Commander Reid Wiseman's voice that broke the silence: "Houston, Integrity here. We hear you loud and clear," BBC reported.
The splashdown: Where did Artemis land?
After communication was reestablished and the cheers of the NASA crews died down, all that was left was to stick the landing: 2,000 miles southwest of the coast of San Diego, in the Pacific Ocean.
To slow the craft down and ensure a safe landing, the Orion landing capsule used a series of parachutes of four different designs, deployed in an extremely precise sequence for maximum effectiveness, described in this NASA brochure.
When the final parachutes were used, the tiny capsule containing the crew had slowed down exponentially, ending in a gentle descent to the ocean waters, captured by CNN.
Splashdown occurred shortly after 5 p.m. PT, hailed as a "perfect bull's eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts" by NASA commentator Rob Navias, while a naval rescue mission extracted the four astronauts from the floating capsule before flying them by helicopter to the USS John P Murtha for medical evaluation, according to official NASA reporting by Jennifer M. Dooren.
How to watch Artemis II
Interested in re-living the dramatic trip, or maybe you missed most of the action and want to see it for the first time? You can watch comprehensive coverage of the entire mission, including interviews with the crew, on NASA's official YouTube page.
For maximum drama, though, see the taped livestream below.
Or if you don't have multiple hours of free time to spare, check out our photo summary of the splashdown compiled by Chris Taylor.
What's next after Artemis II
The success of this mission, as well as its undeniable worldwide appeal, has both NASA and other space agencies thinking of the stars, but there are practical matters to attend to first.
The crew, described from the recovery ship by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman as "ambassadors for humanity," had not made as of this morning any public appearance since cameras captured their dramatic capsule exit, and are expected to take many days to recover from their 10-day trip beyond our atmosphere.
Before the R&R, though, the astronauts were expected to undergo one more ordeal: an obstacle course. As Mashable reporter Elisha Sauers details, the battery of tests, conducted in and out of their heavy astronaut suits, will be used study the body's adaptation to prolonged weightlessness.
But what about the future of space travel?
For some perspective, the Artemis II mission was the first crewed mission into deep space in more than 50 years, but NASA is also viewing it as a first step on a new, multi-decade project to establish a firmer foothold in space.
According to NASA writer Lauren E. Low, future plans include landing humans on the moon and establishing a permanent lunar base, testing rendezvous and docking capabilities with both SpaceX and Blue Origin lunar landers sometime in 2027, and eventually establishing the necessary preconditions for a crewed mission to Mars.
For now, however, the world is breathing a collective sigh of relief, happy to accept the good news of the crews' safe return.
Reporting by Mashable's Elisha Sauers and Chris Taylor contributed to this article.
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