Artemis II Spaceship Launch

Artemis II just splash downed into the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the U.S. on Friday, April 10th at 8:07 PM. Here's all the details - for the long awaited Hound article about Artemis II.

In the spaceship, there were four members in the crew; NASA Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen. For the first time in over fifty years, this brave team were the first to travel to the moon.
Reid Wiseman is an engineer and a U.S. Navy Pilot who previously served as the Chief Astronaut. Victor Glover is a U.S. Navy test pilot who served on the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon flight. Christiana Koch is an engineer who stayed in the ISS from March 2019 to February 2020, and in this trip, she participated in the first all-female spacewalk. She also holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman for a total of 328 days in space.

Jeremy Hansen is a fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He is the first Canadian to lead a NASA Astronaut class, and Artemis II is his first assignment as a astronaut. Go Canada!

The primary reason they flew to the Moon was to accomplish two main adjectives - validate the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System Rocket for future, more intense lunar missions. The mission included manual piloting, deep space system checks, and to set a new record of flying the closest to the Moon. They performed two orbits around the Earth to test multiple systems, including the manual piloting of the Orion space capsule, before fully accelerating towards the moon. They flew around 10 000 kilometers beyond the far side of the moon, which may not sound that close, but, it sets a new record for how far the distance humans have travelled from Earth. They also tested their Translunar Injection, which is a powerful afterburn from the European Service Module to propel the crew from the Earth's orbit towards the Moon.

Now, the science for the splashdown - one of the most important parts of space flying - was incredible. The spacecraft, named as Integrity by the crew, appeared just beat up and rough as it splashed down into the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of San Diego. The capsule had plummeted through the Earth's atmosphere, a 25 000 mph collapse from the atmosphere. During this phase, the astronauts faced 4G of force, quadruple their bodyweight. But, miraculously, the crew of Artemis were not only completely fine & healthy, but were in high spirits returning from the Moon.