Artemis II successfully splashes down, completing historic lunar mission — and another giant leap for mankind

Alex Oliveira and Anna Young / NEW YORK POST

Artemis II spectacularly splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday evening — concluding mankind’s historic return to the moon and completing the first steps toward walking on the lunar surface again.

The capsule perfectly plunked down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego precisely at 8:07 p.m. ET, with the dangerous reentry going off without a hitch as giant orange and white parachutes slowed the zooming capsule for a gentle splashdown at 19 mph.

The crew — Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Jeremy Hansen and Christina Koch — are all in “excellent shape,” NASA said, calling their landing a “perfect bullseye” that was less than a mile from their target.

“Yesterday, flight director Jeff Radigan said we had less than a degree of an angle to hit after a quarter of a million miles to the moon. And their team hit it,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “That is not luck — that is 1,000 people doing their job.”

Artemis II’s peak velocity hit a staggering 24,664 mph — not quite enough to break Apollo 10’s record for fastest reentry in 1967 at 24,791 mph — but impressive in and of itself.Read more, see photos, and video here.