Splashdown! Orion landing after returning from the Moon

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Live: less than 2 hours to Orion’s landing after its 25-day trip around the Moon

At 09:39:42 PST on the 50th anniversary of the last manned landing on the Moon by Apollo 17, the Orion spacecraft completes its mission, Artemis I, from a flight to a distant retrograde orbit on the Moon, to a parachute landing in the Pacific Ocean, near the coast of Baja California in Mexico.

After landing, the ship is picked up by a Navy vessel, in this case the USS Portland. It is an amphibious dock ship (San Antonio class), which makes it possible to rescue the Orion without having to lift it by cables: the ship opens the dock to the ocean and the Orion is pulled with ropes into the dock, which is then drained of water. At the time of writing, the weather is “excellent” in the region and the two Seahawk helicopters that will meet the Orion are ready to take off. After evaluating Orion’s trajectory after the last trajectory correction maneuver, it was found that the maneuver was so precise that the next maneuver will be unnecessary. There will be a new evaluation after Orion separates from the European Service Module. So far, everything has worked excellently on the mission, including the launch, the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the operation of the European Service Module and the Orion capsule. Orion has already been tested in Earth orbit, but due to the limitations of the rocket used (the largest available at the time), entry into the Earth’s atmosphere was at a lower speed (8.9 km/s) than the Moon’s return speed, to be tested today (11 km/s), and with a lighter spacecraft. Orion will use a new re-entry procedure for the first time, using a quick first pass through the atmosphere, “bouncing” back into space, before entering again, to reduce re-entry speed more gradually.

Update: Perfect landing!