When the Orion capsule splashed into the Pacific Ocean after Artemis I in December 2022, it had just survived the fastest, hottest reentry any spacecraft built for humans had faced in more than 50 years.

The Artemis program was officially named and announced by NASA in May 2019, when Artemis III was intended to land “the first woman and next man” on the lunar South Pole in 2024. Since then, the uncrewed Artemis I test flight launched in 2022, and Artemis II is complete.

Within hours of the 8:07 p.m. EDT splashdown, NASA leadership convened a high-stakes news conference to detail the technical health of the mission and, more importantly, to outline the revised future of the Artemis program.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft and its four-member crew emerged from a harrowing six-minute communications blackout Friday evening as the capsule exceeded 25,000 mph and 5,000-degree temperatures while hurtling through Earth’s atmosphere on its way to a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego just after 6 p.m. MDT.

The USS John P. Murtha returned to Naval Base San Diego after successfully retrieving the Orion spacecraft from NASA's Artemis II mission, marking a major milestone in human space exploration.

Apart from pesky issues with the spacecraft’s toilet and waste disposal system, most of the Artemis II mission has proceeded like clockwork. NASA has made few changes to the flight plan since the launch of the lunar flyby mission April 1.

Orion is in space, the Artemis II crew is returning from the moon, and you can follow their journey without leaving Earth.