NASA’s Artemis I Moon Mission: Highlights of Orion Spacecraft Navy Recovery Following Splashdown

All the highlights of the U.S. Navy’s recovery of the Orion spacecraft from the Pacific Ocean following the successful end of the Artemis I moon mission, December 11, 2022. NASA: The Orion spacecraft has been secured in the well deck of the USS Portland. The ship will soon begin its trip back to U.S. Naval Base San Diego, where engineers will remove Orion from the ship in preparation for transport back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for post-flight analysis.   Upon Orion’s successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California at 12:40 PM EST December 11, flight controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston spent about two hours performing tests in open water to gather additional data about the spacecraft, including on its thermal properties after enduring the searing heat of re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere. Recovery personnel also spent time collecting detailed imagery of the spacecraft before beginning to pull the capsule into the USS Portland