NASA eyes Moon landing after safe return of Artemis II astronauts

NASA aims to land humans on the moon, where the space agency also plans to set up a habitat that would be the launchpad for future missions to Mars and beyond.

Washington: "The path to the moon is open, but the work ahead is greater than the work behind," Amit Kshatriya, NASA Associate Administrator, said shortly after the Artemis-II crew returned to earth off the coast of San Diego.

Amid claps and cheers, four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission splashed down in the Pacific ocean at 8:07 eastern time on Friday after a historic flight to the moon – the first by humans in more than 50 years.

Artemis II was the first crewed mission to utilise NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew module - demonstrating that the agency's equipment can propel astronauts out of Earth's orbit and bring them safely home.

NASA now aims to land humans on the moon, where the space agency also plans to set up a habitat that would be the launchpad for future missions to Mars and beyond.

The lunar flyby mission involving Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen was the first journey to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days exploring the lunar surface.

Rick Henfling, the flight director, said the Artemis II astronauts are "happy and healthy and ready to come home to Houston."

"Yesterday, flight director Jeff Radigan said we had less than a degree of an angle to hit after a quarter of a million miles to the moon," Kshatriya told a press conference.

"And their team hit it. This is not luck; that is 1,000 people doing their job," he said.

The mission flew 700,237 miles; its peak velocity was 24,664 m.p.h.; and the flight had an entry range of 1,957 miles but landed within one mile of its target, Henfling said.

It was a triumphant homecoming for the crew of four whose record-breaking lunar flyby revealed not only swaths of the moon's far side never seen before by human eyes but a total solar eclipse.

They emerged from their bobbing capsule into the sunlight one by one.

Henfling said his team 'breathed a sigh of relief' once the side hatch opened on the Orion Integrity after it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

"We all breathed a sigh of relief once the hatch opened up. That's when we brought the team in," he said.

"We said a few words to the flight controllers, and then we turned around to the families and waved and gave them a thumbs up, and we all watched as each of their four astronauts got out of the spaceship and were hoisted up onto the helicopters. It was a great day," he added.

Henfling said his team felt "anxiety" as the four astronauts re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, but felt confident in all their training leading up to the history-making lunar mission.

NASA said the Artemis III mission is "right around the corner" following its history-making journey around the moon.

"The next mission is right around the corner, and you know, we'll take the lessons learned from Artemis II," Henfling said.

"We learned a bunch on how to fly people in space, both from vehicle operations, but also from how to run a control room with a deep space mission. And when the time is right, we'll get back into specific training, and we've got a core group of about 30 flight directors, and they're all extremely capable.

"I think anybody who's assigned to that next mission is going to be as successful as us," Henfling said.