A historic 25-day flight around the moon will end with the splashdown of the Orion Capsule
NASA
- The historic Artemis 1 mission came to an end on Sunday.
- The mission saw a spacecraft fly around the moon in just more than 25 days.
- A NASA official told CNN he would give the mission a letter grade of "A."
NASA's Artemis 1 mission will come to an end on Sunday when the unmanned spacecraft that flew 239,000 miles around the moon lands in the Pacific Ocean, according to reports.
The Orion capsule was expected to land in the water somewhere near San Diego at around 12:40 pm central time, but inclement weather pushed it off its course and it is now expected to land in Mexico's Baja California according to CNN. NASA aired live coverage of the spacecraft's landing on its website.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN that the capsule's "next big test is the heat shield," the barrier designed to protect the capsule from burning up upon reentering the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA is planning to curtail moon missions to focus more astronaut-driven missions on going to Mars, according to CNN.
Nelson told CNN that if he were to give the Artemis mission a letter grade, it would be an "A."
"Not an A-plus, simply because we expect things to go wrong. And the good news is that when they do go wrong, NASA knows how to fix them," Nelson told CNN. But "if I'm a schoolteacher, I would give it an A-plus."