NASA's Artemis II mission successfully wrapped up Friday as the Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California coast.
The 10-day mission took four astronauts on a historic flyby of the moon traveling further into deep space than any previous crew and breaking the long-standing Apollo 13 distance record.
The history-making crew which included the first woman, the first person of color, and the first non-U.S. citizen on a lunar flight endured a fiery 5,000°F re-entry before being safely recovered by U.S. Navy teams.
This successful high-stakes test of the capsule's heat shield and recovery systems marks a major milestone in NASA's broader goal of returning humans to the lunar surface by 2028.
