Orion successfully lands in the Pacific Ocean after traveling around the moon

NASA’s Orion capsule, part of the Artemis I mission, landed in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday evening after a 25-day mission. NASA has now started recovering the capsule and obtaining the data on board.

NASA Orion touches down in the Pacific Ocean, December 2022

Orion has been around the moon and… returned Sunday evening. That happened west of the Mexican coast. The landing took place with a technique not previously used by NASA, in which the capsule was lifted during descent gained height again for a while. This ‘skip entry’ ensures that NASA could determine Orion’s landing site much more precisely close to the American coast.

This space mission is intended to test various aspects of Orion in deep space before the capsule is used to return astronauts to the moon for the first time in decades. This should happen with the Artemis III mission, which is scheduled for 2025. At the end of November, NASA announced that Orion had entered orbit around the moon. A few days later it was announced that the capsule has traveled more than 432,210 km in space since launch. According to NASA, that is the greatest distance that a spacecraft intended to carry people has ever reached.