Artemis 2: First Moon Flyby in 50 Years

0:00It's April 10th. This is Tampa Bay News today, powered by AI. The Artemis II crew just wrapped up a groundbreaking 10-day lunar fly-by, becoming the first humans to swing by the moon since Apollo 17 back. In 1972, Commander Reed Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hanson launched on April 1st, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center aboard the Orion capsule named Integrity. They shattered Apollo 13's distance record, peaking at 252,756 miles from Earth. Now they're heading home for a splashdown off San Diego on Friday, April 10th, at 8.07 PM Eastern. Earlier this week, Orion detached from its service module, and tonight it'll hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 miles per hour. Enduring up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, in superheated plasma, the crew will feel up to 3.9 Gs before 11 parachutes, slow them to a gentle 20 miles per hour touchdown in

1:04the Pacific. This mission marked huge firsts, Wiseman as the first moon mission commander in over 50 years. Glover the first black man on a lunar trip, Koch the, first woman, Hanson, the first Canadian. From their vantage, they caught a solar eclipse, and even chatted with the International Space Station crew orbiting below. The crew's are buzzing about how this pays the way for future moon landings. They ran key experiments too, like wearing sleep and movement trackers for real-time health data, collecting saliva samples, and testing balance. Recovery right after splashdown. Four cubes sat deployed to study radiation in space, and onboard detectors monitored exposure to help shield future crews from solar storms. Recovery teams on the USS John P. Murtha are standing by with helicopters to snag the capsule in astronauts, followed by quick medical checks before, flying them to Johnson Space Center. Artemis II tested the whole system flawlessly, setting the stage for what's next in deep

2:04space.