Here’s why NASA’s Artemis I mission is so rare, and so remarkable

Enlarge / NASA's Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean after a successful mission on Sunday. (credit: NASA)

The first step of a journey is often the most difficult one. So it is worth pausing a moment to celebrate that NASA just took the essential first step on the path toward establishing a permanent presence in deep space.

Amidst a backdrop of blue skies and white clouds, the Orion spacecraft dropped into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday a few hundred kilometers off the Baja Peninsula. This brought to a close the Artemis I mission, a 25.5-day spaceflight that demonstrated NASA is just about ready to begin flying humans back into deep space once again.

This has not happened in half a century. At times, it seemed like it might never happen again. But now, it is most definitely happening.

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