The American spacecraft „Orion“ from the „Artemis II“ mission successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean, NASA announced.
„At 8:07 p.m. (3:07 a.m. Bulgarian time) on April 11, they successfully landed with parachutes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego“, the statement said.
The astronauts will be removed from the „Orion“ capsule and taken to the medical bay aboard the US Navy rescue ship USS John P. Murtha. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the crew's performance, calling them "completely professional astronauts, superb communicators and almost poets." On April 1, the United States launched a manned spacecraft to the Moon with four astronauts on board: Americans Reid Weissman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen, performed a flyby of the Moon. This is the second mission in NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon. On April 6, the spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth - 406,771 km. This also marked the first time that humans had traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. On the morning of April 7, at 4:35 a.m. Bulgarian time, the crew began their return journey home. The journey to the Moon lasted approximately 10 days.