HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Living here in the Rocket City, you may or may not have heard about one of NASA's latest missions, Artemis 1.
The end goal of Artemis 1 is to put man back on the moon and beyond. Launching the Orion Spacecraft into the sky was one of the first steps.
On December 11, the Orion splashed back down on Mother Earth! There was a local watched party in honor of this splashdown hosted by the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and the Rocket City Trash Pandas.
The Orion capsule launched into space atop a Marshall Space Flight Center-managed SLS rocket on November 16 and traveled 1.3 million miles to the moon and back. The splashdown completed Artemis I’s 25-day, 10-hour, and 53-minute mission and tested both the SLS and Orion for future lunar missions.
"We witnessed the Orion come home after Artemis 1, finally, after, what, three attempts?" said Splashdown Party Attendee, Cady Gagliano.
To no surprise, many folks living in The Valley have personal ties to the Artemis 1 mission and the Orion itself.
"So my dad has been on this project for at least the past ten years, and he is one of the main people, along with the team that I work with now," said Gagliano.
"I help test and build the rocket that helped launch Orion. Yeah. It's incredible to be part of it. You still feel very attached to it and feel like a part of it, even if you didn't directly work on that spacecraft," said Tatjana Fisher, a test engineer with Boeing.
Again, with all involved working towards the same goal, putting humans back into space: "Yeah, it's awesome. Everybody here is part of the mission. We all have the same end goal," said Fisher.
"The upcoming Artemis missions are going to put men and women on the moon and the first person of color on the moon. So we're really excited about that. I grew up with, you know, the space shuttle era and I always wanted to be a part of the space program and now to see something actually happening during my time, it's wonderful," said Solar System Ambassador, John Brackett.