The Orion space capsule of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) uncrewed Artemis I test flight successfully splashed down in the eastern Pacific Ocean, west of Baja California, Sunday evening South African time. This concluded what had been a record-breaking mission, which lasted 25.5 days and travelled more than 2.25-million kilometres and went further from the Earth – reaching a distance of nearly 435 000 km – than any human-rated spacecraft had ever gone before, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. “The splashdown of the Orion spacecraft – which occurred 50 years to the day of the Apollo 17 Moon landing – is the crowning achievement of Artemis I,” highlighted Nasa administrator Bill Nelson. “From the launch of the world’s most powerful rocket to the exceptional journey around the Moon and back to Earth, this flight test is a major step forward in the Artemis generation of lunar exploration.”
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