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After completing its 1.4 million mile trip to the Moon and back.
NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft has returned to the Kennedy Space Center.
The homecoming occurred on December 30th.
Artemis 1 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11th.
After the USS Portland recovered the unmanned crew vehicle and brought it to Naval Base San Diego on December 13th
the capsule embarked on an overland trek to Florida the next day.
Artemis 1’s record-breaking journey began on November 16th
with a memorable night time 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 re-entry.
The agency will also remove Moonikin Campos, the test dummy
NASA sent aboard Orion to collect data on how travel to the Moon might affect humans.
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.
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