NASA's Orion capsule zoomed through Earth's atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific ocean on Sunday, the U.S. space agency confirmed, capping a 25-day voyage around the moon and back as part of NASA's first Artemis mission.
The gumdrop-shaped capsule splashed down on time at 9:40 a.m. PST (1740 GMT) off the coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula after deploying various sets of parachutes to brake its speedy return from space.
Following nearly a month in space, the capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico on Sunday, according to live footage from NASA. It was greeted by a team of specialists and divers and is now set to be taken to the port of San Diego.
Orion flew at 40,000 kilometres per hour as it entered Earth's atmosphere, and then slowed down to around 480 kilometres per hour.
Orion's heat shield withstands temperatures of around 2,800 degrees Celsius. With the help of five parachutes, the spacecraft decelerated even further to around 32 kilometres per hour as it hit the water.
Even before the landing, NASA chief Bill Nelson described the Artemis test mission as an "extraordinary success."
The mission was subject to repeated postponements and cost overruns. But after its launch on November 16 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the flight went largely smoothly and the planned milestones could be checked off: Flyby of the Moon; insertion into the orbit of the Moon; swinging out of the orbit; followed by a further flyby.
The Artemis programme, named after the Greek goddess of the Moon, is to land US astronauts on the Moon again in the coming years, including for the first time a woman and a non-white person.
A first manned flight - Artemis 2 - around the Moon is to be followed by another manned flight including a Moon landing. The last human mission to land on the Moon was carried out by NASA in 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission.
The US put 12 astronauts on the Moon with the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972. The US is the only country to have successfully put humans on the Moon.
