Skip to main content

PHOTOS: Artemis II returns to Earth with a Pacific Ocean splashdown

Related stories

Artemis II’s astronauts closed out humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century with a Pacific splashdown on Friday, blazing records near the moon with grace and joy.

It was a dramatic grand finale to a 10-day mission that revealed not only swaths of the lunar far side never seen before by human eyes, but a total solar eclipse and a parade of planets, most notably our own shimmering Earth against the endless black void of space.

With their flight now complete, the four astronauts have set NASA up for a moon landing by another crew in just two years and a full-blown moon base within the decade.

The triumphant moon-farers — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen — emerged from their bobbing capsule into the sunlight off the coast of San Diego.

Faint new planet is revealed around a young star after a decade in hiding

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have discovered a faint, elusive planet orbiting a young star after more than a decade of cosmic hide-and-seek. In an unusual twist, two groups working independently detected the cold gas giant a few days apart late last year using different telescopes. It's the dimmest planet ever directly imaged from Earth, scientists reported Wednesday. A Scottish and German-led team spied the new planet around the star Beta Pictoris using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, then dug through archives to confirm its orbit. The planet had remained hidden in the data all this time, overshadowed by its considerably brighter star and two companion planets. “It was very much playing hide-and-seek for 11 years,” said the European Southern Observatory’s Markus Bonse, co-leader of the first team.
Read Next Story