Artemis II's crew module returned

[mtbc]

It is a considerable relief to have the crew of Artemis II safely back on Earth. I wonder in what state the heat shield is now. We stayed up late (for us) last night, streaming Coachella until nearer the reentry time, so we slept in somewhat this morning. It will be great if we manage a successful moon landing and return, for which even more things must go well.

The talk of a moonbase is exciting though this decade seems courageous, I would have thought anything remotely worthy of the name to be a whole order of magnitude tougher still. I wonder how eager future administrations will be to keep pushing the effort. Nonetheless, I should be very happy were we to continue actively working toward such a goal.

Comments

[shadowkat]

I share your relief that the Artemis II crew returned safely. I've seen one too many disaster/horror flicks on the topic, and well, Challenger. So ...I worried the whole time.

[thewayne]

I was also very happy to hear of the safe return. It'll be interesting to see what the after-report on the heat shield reveals. They did announce before re-entry that the helium valve system was still being problematic, so that's going to be re-engineered and replaced before III launches.

Moon base isn't going to happen this decade. They've yet to get working moon suits and a lander.

[mellowtigger]

Yes, good news. :)

[darkoshi]

If a moon base gets built with permanent personnel, it will be an odd feeling to look up at the moon and know that there are people up there on it.
That reminds me now of an old sci-fi TV show... "Space 1999", it must have been.