Splashdown ended the 25-day mission less than a week after passing about 79 miles (127 km) above the Moon in a lunar fly-by, and about 270,000 miles (434,500 km) into space at its farthest point. Came about two weeks after getting to the point. ) from Earth.
At 9 a.m. PST the capsule committed to a 20-minute plunge into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 24,500 mph (39,400 kph), when it shed its service module, exposing a heatshield that heated to approximately 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (2,760 °C) reached its peak temperature. ,
Orion lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Nov. 16 atop NASA’s massive Next Generation Space Launch System (SLS), now the world’s most powerful rocket and the largest NASA has launched since Apollo’s Saturn V. Made from Era.
The first SLS-Orion voyage kicked off Artemis, the Apollo successor program that aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface this decade and establish a permanent base for future human exploration of Mars.