Artemis II’s history-making astronauts have successfully arrived back on Earth with a “perfect bullseye splashdown” off the coast of California. After its 10-day lunar voyage, the Orion capsule hit the atmosphere travelling at Mach 33, or 33 times the speed of sound – a blistering pace not seen since the Apollo missions. Tension mounted in mission control as the capsule, named Integrity by its crew, became engulfed in red-hot plasma and entered a planned six-minute communication blackout. Follow live: Crew return to Earth after historic mission Image: Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen on the flight deck of USS John P Murtha. Pic: Reuters All eyes were on Orion’s life-protecting heat shield, which withstood thousands of degrees of heat at the moment of re-entry. The capsule then deployed nearly a dozen parachutes to slow itself down to around 17mph for the moment at 5.07pm local time on Friday (1.07am UK time on Saturday) when it hit the Pacific Ocean – which NASA described as a “perfect bullseye splashdown”. You need javascript enabled to view this content …