NASA’s Orion spacecraft and its four-member crew emerged from a harrowing six-minute communications blackout Friday evening as the capsule exceeded 25,000 mph and 5,000-degree temperatures while hurtling through Earth’s atmosphere on its way to a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego just after 6 p.m. MDT.

Artemis II astronauts are returning to Earth after a historic lunar flyby, setting a new record for human spaceflight.

When the Orion capsule splashed into the Pacific Ocean after Artemis I in December 2022, it had just survived the fastest, hottest reentry any spacecraft built for humans had faced in more than 50 years.