The Artemis II crew completed their mission Friday and returned to Earth following a historic journey in space.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Artemis II mission launched at 6:35 p.m. on April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a brief hold for final technical checks, including a minor sensor concern that engineers confirmed would not affect the launch. NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen carried out final procedures aboard their spacecraft before beginning reentry.

The spacecraft entered Earth’s atmosphere at 7:53 p.m. ET after descending from an altitude of about 400,000 feet and traveling at roughly 30 times the speed of sound. During the descent, ground teams experienced a brief six-minute communications blackout, as expected. The mission concluded with a successful splashdown off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. ET.

For several minutes, the spacecraft lost contact with Earth because superheated plasma formed around it and blocked radio signals, creating an expected but tense communications blackout. The Orion capsule endured extreme reentry heating as temperatures around its heat shield reached roughly 5,000°F (2,760°C) while it cut through Earth’s atmosphere and its heat shield was designed to absorb and burn away material to protect the crew module.

Artemis II plays a key role in testing NASA’s systems as part of broader efforts to advance future lunar exploration and strengthen U.S. leadership in the space race with China, Reuters reported. The program, which supports plans for regular Moon missions and has cost about $93 billion since 2012, aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028 for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. (Read more from “Artemis Crew Returns To Earth After Successful Mission” HERE)