Artemis II Crew Praises Orion Heat Shield Success

HOUSTON — The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission praised the performance of their Orion spacecraft during a news conference Thursday at the agency's Johnson Space Center, highlighting the heat shield's success in withstanding reentry and advancing plans for future lunar landings.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen described their nearly 10-day journey as a key step toward crewed moon landings and a sustainable lunar presence. Launched on April 1 from Florida, the mission marked NASA's first crewed flight to the moon in more than 50 years and featured the program's most diverse crew to date, including the first woman and the first person of color assigned to a lunar mission.

The crew looped around the moon's far side, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 and becoming the farthest humans from Earth. They observed lunar features previously unseen by human eyes, illuminated during the flyby, and witnessed a total lunar eclipse that added to the mission's scientific observations. The Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity by the crew, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean last Friday,...