NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft returns to Kennedy Space Center

After to the Moon and back at the start of last month, NASA’s Artemis 1 The Kennedy Space Center is pleased to welcome him back. The homecoming occurred on December 30th. Artemis 1 sank in the Pacific Ocean, December 11th. The capsule set off on an overland journey to Florida on the following day after the USS Portland recovered the unmanned craft and brought it to Naval Base San Diego. Artemis 1’s began on with a memorable nighttime launch atop NASA’s next-generation Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket.

Now that Orion is back at Kennedy Space Center, NASA will remove the spacecraft’s heat shield so that it can conduct an “extensive analysis” of the component and determine exactly how it fared during atmospheric reentry. It will also remove the heat shield. NASA sent an Orion test dummy aboard Orion as a sandbag to collect data about the effects of travel to the Moon on humans. “Artemis I was a major step forward as part of NASA’s lunar exploration efforts and sets the stage for the next mission of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion to fly crew around the Moon on Artemis II,” NASA said.

While Artemis II won’t launch until 2024 at the earliest, there’s still a lot to look forward to between now and next year. NASA promised to announce the mission’s four-person crew sometime in “early 2023.” Artemis II will set the stage for the first human lunar landing since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, and eventually a permanent NASA presence on the Moon.