NASA's Artemis II moonship returns home to its launch site after historic voyage

NASA's Artemis II spacecraft completes historic lunar journey and returns to Kennedy Space Center for post-mission analysis. | Contesto: cronaca

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• NASA's Artemis II moonship returns home to its launch site after historic voyage

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NASA's Artemis II moonship returned to its launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, concluding a historic voyage that marked the first crewed flight around the Moon in more than half a century. The spacecraft, which carried four astronauts on a 10-day mission, touched down at the facility’s landing zone at 9:47 a.m. local time, where recovery teams began the process of extracting the crew and securing the vehicle for post-flight inspections. The mission, which launched from the same pad on November 16, saw the Orion capsule travel more than 1.4 million miles, looping around the lunar far side before slingshotting back to Earth. It was the first time humans have ventured beyond low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The crew—Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen—reported no major anomalies during the flight, though engineers noted minor thermal fluctuations during reentry that are now under review. The return of the moonship to its original hangar marks the beginning of a months-long analysis phase. NASA officials said the spacecraft will undergo a battery of tests to assess heat shield performance, life support system durability, and structural integrity after exposure to deep space radiation. Data from the mission will inform refinements for Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts near the lunar south pole as early as 2025. The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister, represents NASA’s long-term effort to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon and eventually mount crewed missions to Mars. This milestone comes amid shifting political priorities in Washington. The Biden administration has reaffirmed its support for Artemis, though budget negotiations continue on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers have questioned the program’s rising costs, now estimated at $93 billion through 2025. Meanwhile, international partners, including the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, have contributed key components to the Orion spacecraft and the Gateway lunar outpost planned for later this decade. The successful return of...

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Categoria: cronaca