- Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada's Jeremy Hansen entered the atmosphere traveling at a speed 33 times the speed of sound—a velocity not witnessed since NASA's Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s.
- Their Orion capsule, named 'Integrity,' descended on autopilot.
- Tension mounted in Mission Control as the capsule became enveloped in red-hot plasma during the peak of atmospheric heating and entered a scheduled communications blackout.
- The recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha, awaited the crew's arrival off the coast of San Diego, accompanied by a squadron of military aircraft and helicopters.
- During the 10-day Artemis II mission, the crew became the first humans to journey toward the Moon in over 50 years, setting a new record for the greatest distance ever traveled from Earth.
- These astronauts were also the first individuals to launch aboard NASA's massive Space Launch System rocket and to travel in the Orion spacecraft.
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