NASA’s Orion capsule splashes down in Pacific

The unmanned Orion capsule on Sunday landed in the Pacific Ocean off of Baja California after a 25-day journey into space. The craft’s return to Earth is the final step in NASA’s Artemis I mission that began with a successful rocket launch Nov. 16 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the mission, Orion completed two lunar flybys and traveled nearly 270,000 miles from Earth, more than one thousand times farther than the International Space Station’s orbit. The capsule is the first to visit the moon since the Apollo missions. Orion returned to Earth on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 moon landing.

What is next for the Artemis missions? The Artemis I launch was part of NASA’s larger quest to establish a long-term human presence on the moon. A manned Orion mission around the moon with four crew members is expected to take place in 2024 and NASA plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface in 2025 or 2026. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the ultimate goal of the program is to land humans on Mars by 2030.

Dig deeper: Listen to Bonnie Pritchett’s coverage of the Artemis I mission on The World and Everything in It podcast.