I just wanted to offer a quick note here from National Review’s Space Desk to mark the successful return of the Artemis II crew to Earth. At 5:07 p.m. Pacific Time last night, the Orion-class command module (named the Integrity by its crew) splashed down in the waters off the coast of San Diego, and was retrieved by the U.S.S. John Murtha. Our astronauts have returned, safe and sound, along with their capsule. This means that the Artemis II mission, having fullfilled every one of its assigned tasks, can now be deemed an unqualified success.
Our astronauts are heroes, and the men and women of NASA whose engineering expertise made their mission possible deserve to stand alongside them in our equal esteem. They took our four astronauts past the heavens, to the moon, and brought them home safely. (As is right and proper, they had an enormous assist in their efforts from the laws of physics.)
The next step will be preparing to put American boots back on the moon — and one day sending a manned mission to Mars. John F. Kennedy famously announced that Americans are driven to do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” America can still do the hard things, by God, and a reminder of that feels especially timely right now.
In a global moment pregnant with gloom, Artemis II is a ray of hope. Speaking as a man who in some ways will forever be the boy who watched live in school as the Challenger exploded upon takeoff, every successful space mission feels like a miracle to me, so I was holding my breath last night as I watched the module descend to the ocean, slowed by three massive parachutes. What if something goes wrong at the last second? Of course it didn’t, and I shouldn’t have doubted. And as I watched the crew get helicoptered to safety, my fears melted away and were replaced with another sentiment swelling up proudly within me: I can’t wait until the next mission is launched.