Nasa's Artemis II crew returns to Earth with Pacific splashdown near California's San Diego

Nasa’s Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California early Saturday, marking their return to Earth after a lunar flyby mission.The Orion spacecraft carrying the crew completed a successful splashdown. A joint Nasa and US military recovery team was on site to receive the astronauts and provide medical support. Following liftoff on April 1, the 10-day mission sent four astronauts on a flyby around the Moon, testing life-support, navigation and propulsion systems in deep space without landing, Nasa said. The mission also paves the way for a potential crewed Moon landing in 2028.The mission made history by setting a new record for the farthest distance humans have travelled from Earth, reaching 406,771 kilometres on the far side of the Moon. This surpasses the previous record of 400,171 kilometres set by Apollo 13 in 1970.During the flyby, the astronauts spent several hours capturing images and describing views as they looped around the Moon before beginning their journey back to Earth.Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen reentered Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 33 — 33 times the speed of sound — marking a return to velocities not seen since Nasa’s Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970sThe crew did not plan to take manual control except in an emergency, with their Orion capsule, named Integrity, operating in a fully autonomous modeLead flight director Jeff Radigan said he expected a degree of “irrational fear that is human nature,” particularly during the six-minute communication blackout before parachute deploymentThe recovery ship USS John P Murtha was positioned off the coast of San Diego to receive the crew, supported by military aircraft and helicoptersThe last joint reentry operation by Nasa and the US Defense Department for a lunar crew was during Apollo 17 in 1972.