Tech
Watch the closeup moment they opened the Artemis II hatch after splashdown
When people watched NASA's Artemis II mission return to Earth, they saw helicopter views of little orange-clad figures exiting the spacecraft onto a raft.
But the U.S. space agency has since released a short closeup video of the Navy recovery team as it opened the hatch on Friday, April 10. The trained divers and medical officers entered the tiny 330 cubic-foot Orion capsule, greeted the four astronauts.
From video cameras mounted on the recovery team's helmets, shown in the X post below, it's as if you're right there with them. The team cheers and claps, with shouts of "let's go!" followed by "four green" (a callout that the crew was OK).
"Welcome home," the recovery team said to the Artemis II crew, Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, the first humans to fly around the moon since 1972.
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Up close, the spacecraft, dubbed Integrity by the crew, appeared battered and singed as it bobbed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. The capsule had just plummeted through Earth's atmosphere, a fiery descent that put the crew through a 25,000 mph ride.
During that intense and dangerous phase, the astronauts experienced nearly 4Gs, a pressure pushing against them equal to four times their bodyweight. Without proper training, those conditions, coupled with adrenaline overload, could cause a person to blackout.
But as the recovery team soon discovered, not only was the returning crew healthy, they were in high spirits, smiling as they waited through the procedures to leave the spacecraft. At the end of the video, one of the recovery officials, referred to as "Vlad," said he had something for Wiseman. The clip ends before that "something" is revealed.
"Jesse, Steve, Laddy, and Vlad….such an incredible feeling to welcome you aboard Integrity after a nearly 700,000 mile journey," Wiseman said in a post on X. "Forever thankful for your service to our crew and the nation."
What is clear is that the people who welcomed Artemis II back to Earth seemed just as exhilarated as the astronauts themselves. Before climbing inside the crew's living quarters for the 10-day journey, the team almost forgot to place the seal cover over the bottom edge of the hatch in their haste to see their friends.
Artemis II, which launched April 1, marked NASA's triumphant return of human-led space exploration. It planned the voyage as the critical shakeout cruise for the spacecraft before the agency attempts to land on the moon. During the flight, the Artemis II crew put Orion through its paces, testing everything from propulsion and communications to how well humans can live, work, and make scientific observations far from home.
Credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls
Packed with cameras, sensors, and experiments, the mission turned the crew into both test pilots and test subjects, gathering data to shape future Artemis voyages. A successful journey vets the hardware and flight controllers for a moonwalk planned for 2028.
NASA isn't just motivated to get back to the moon for the moon's sake but to practice keeping humans alive in another world for extended periods. That's crucial before sending astronauts on a months-long spaceflight to Mars, perhaps possible in the late 2030s.
A new space race also sets the timeline for the Artemis campaign. The United States wants to land on the moon again before China, which is extremely close to achieving its first human moon landing.
If you thought the splashdown meant Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen could finally relax, you'd be wrong. Just hours after landing, NASA tested the crew's mettle again with an obstacle course.
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NASA is set to send four astronauts on a mission around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, and viewers can watch the launch countdown live on April 1.
Artemis II is a test flight of the U.S. space agency's Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule. The mission follows Artemis I, the successful uncrewed inaugural voyage of the spacecraft in 2022.
NASA will stream the launch from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on its website, social media, and its YouTube channel. Live coverage of filling the rocket's tanks with fuel is expected to begin at 7:45 a.m. ET Wednesday on Youtube. Viewers can watch the event on NASA+, the space agency's free streaming service, starting at 12:50 p.m. ET.
The broadcast will track the four-person crew — Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Jeremy Hansen — as they board Orion. The actual two-hour launch window opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
This mission is designed as a roughly 10-day deep space excursion that will loop around Earth before slingshotting around the moon and returning home. If successful, it would mark a major step toward future missions that aim to land astronauts on the lunar surface and establish a moon base there.
The flight also carries historic milestones. Koch is set to become the first woman to travel to the moon, and Glover the first Black astronaut to do so. Hansen, a Canadian astronaut, would be the first non-American assigned to a lunar mission. Their journey's estimated distance of 248,700 miles also could set a new record for farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth.
Watch the launch livestream here beginning at 7:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday, April 1.
NASA's live coverage typically includes real-time updates from the firing room, views from the launchpad, and commentary explaining each stage of the countdown. The agency will also provide rolling updates on its official Artemis blog.
The forecast so far shows an 80 percent chance of good weather conditions for launch day. Mission managers are mostly concerned about cloud coverage and high winds.
If the launch attempt is called off for weather or technical issues, the agency could try again any day through April 6. There is one other launch opportunity at the end of this month on April 30. NASA has declined to provide future launch windows beyond April to the public.
The problem with announcing any kind of news on April 1 is that absolutely nobody will believe you.
Case in point: On Wednesday morning, KitKat announced that customers could use a special online tracking tool to figure out if their purchased confectionery goods were part of the massive 12-ton KitKat heist that's gotten the internet's attention over the past few days.
The KitKat heist tracker was advertised on the official KitKat X account, and whoever runs the account is ardently insisting, both in the original post and in the replies, that this is real and not an April Fool's joke.
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Taking a look at the tracker itself, it's hard to parse fiction from reality. It appears to be a pretty straightforward tracker with a text input for an 8-digit batch code on the back of each KitKat package. I don't personally have any KitKats on hand to test this out with, but I typed in a random 8-digit number and was told that it wasn't part of the stolen batch.
So, at the very least, the tracker is actually checking for something. It's just impossible to say what would happen if you happened to type in a "correct" batch code.
Whether or not the tracker is a hoax, the heist was very real. More than 400,000 KitKat bars were stolen from a delivery truck going between Italy and Poland, prompting plenty of The Fast and the Furious memes (and some genuine concerns for the public supply of KitKats ahead of the Easter holiday).
For what it's worth, the company, Nestle KitKat, says there is no threat to the chocolatey supply chain at this time.
SAVE $400: As of April 1, the Hisense 55-inch Canvas QLED 4K TV is down to only $599.99 at Amazon. That's 40% off its list price and a new best price ever.
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The Amazon Big Spring Sale delivered plenty of excellent TV deals, but budget-friendly brand Hisense isn't playing by the rules. While the brand (which is one of our favorites, BTW) did drop prices over the last week, it waited until the sale was officially over to give us its best prices ever on several TV models — including the coveted Canvas art TV.
As of April 1, the Hisense 55-inch Canvas QLED 4K TV is down to just $599.99 at Amazon. That's 40% or $400 off its list price and a new lowest price on record. For those curious, the same TV was $87.98 more during the Spring Sale.
The Canvas TV is an alternative to the popular Samsung The Frame TV for budget-conscious shoppers. Like The Frame, it transforms a basic black box into a stylish piece of artwork that hangs on your wall. Its matte finish allows it to blend seamlessly into a gallery wall with other non-tech wall hangings. Unlike The Frame, it uses Google TV's interface, which Mashable's Miller Kern (a Canvas TV owner) says is "way more intuitive and responsive than Samsung's."
Beyond doubling as artwork, the Hisense Canvas is a QLED TV, so it's noticeably brighter and more saturated than a basic LED TV. It'll look brilliant in any lighting conditions. It also features a variable refresh rate up to 144Hz, which is surprisingly good for gaming, real-time adaptive brightness and color temperature, and an ultra-slim wall mount that lies flush against the wall for the true framed art look.
Watch NASAs historic Artemis 2 launch attempt live today. Heres how.
KitKat heist tracker lets candy lovers check if their KitKat is from the heist
The Hisense 55-inch Canvas art TV is down to a new best price ever post-Spring Sale
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