Watch Live: Artemis 1 spacecraft heads for splashdown to wrap up historic mission via CBSNews
NASA's Artemis 1 moonship returned to Earth Sunday, slamming into the upper atmosphere at more than 24,000 mph and enduring a 5,000-degree re-entry inferno before settling to a picture perfect splashdown in the Pacific Ocean to close out a 25-day 1.4-million-mile test flight to the moon and back.
A joint Navy-NASA recovery team was standing by within sight of the Orion splashdown to inspect the scorched capsule and, after a final round of tests, tow it into the flooded well deck of the USS Portland, an amphibious dock ship. "There is no arc jet or aerothermal facility here on Earth capable of replicating hypersonic reentry with a heat shield of this size," he said."And it is a brand new heat shield design, and it is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and ... so the heat shield needs to work."
NASA originally planned to bring the ship down west of San Diego, but a predicted cold front bringing higher winds and rougher seas prompted mission managers to move the landing site south by about 350 miles, to a point just south of Guadalupe Island some 200 miles west of Baja California.
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