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The Orion capsule carrying the Artemis II astronauts has successfully splashed down off the coast of San Diego at 8:07PM Eastern time on April 10. It signals the conclusion of Artemis II's 10-day journey around the moon, which is meant to be a test flight for a future mission that would bring humanity back to the lunar surface. The Orion crew module carrying the mission's astronauts separated from the service module at 7:33 PM. While the service module was designed to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, the crew capsule was built to bring the astronauts back home safely.
By 7:53 PM, Orion reached our planet's upper atmosphere, where a six-minute communication blackout occurred due to the capsule heating up as it started its guided descent. The capsule has 11 parachutes, with its drogue parachutes being deployed at 23,400 feet to stabilize and slow it down. When Orion reached 5,400 feet above the ground, the drogue parachutes were cut off so that the three main parachutes could be deployed. That decreased the capsule's velocity to 200 feet per second, enabling a safe splashdown.
NASA's engineers conducted several tests while the capsule was in the water before the recovery team headed to the capsule on inflatable boats to extract the crew from Orion. By 9:34 PM, all four crew members were out of the capsule. They were then hoisted into helicopters and flown to the USS John P. Murtha dock ship, where doctors will assess their health.
Artemis II launc
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I really need to upgrade my brain's internal storage.
I'm only partially kidding: Just like a hard drive, I'm pretty sure my mind reached maximum capacity at some point in the past decade. The only way I can remember anything these days is by making and maintaining a million notes, both physical and digital. (My wife can confirm this: "I told you that a week ago" is an all-too-common phrase 'round these parts.)
I'm still waiting for Western Digital to start selling SSD implants for the noggin, but in the meantime, Google Keep has become my repository for notes of the non-sticky variety. I like it because it's simple to use and yet packed with features that make my life easier on both a professional and a personal level.
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