Crew safely aboard USS John P Murthapublished at 03:02 BST
Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
Image source, NASAHelicopters aboard the USS John P Murtha
All four Artemis II crew members are now aboard the USS John P Murtha — a San Diego-based warship with a floodable cargo bay large enough to take the Orion capsule on board directly from the ocean.
It also has a helicopter pad, and onboard medical facilities. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen were extracted from the Orion capsule one by one, hoisted by helicopter and transferred to the recovery ship.
Each astronaut will be checked by flight surgeons for pulse, blood pressure, brain and nerve responses, and balance.
The balance system in the inner ear get used to weightlessness, so when astronauts come home they often feel dizzy and unsteady until they readjust.
Britain’s first astronaut Helen Sharman, who went through this herself, told me it took about 20 or 30 paces before she could walk in a straight line — her brain had to relearn that picking up one leg required the rest of her body to balance.
Even lifting a finger, she said, felt surprisingly heavy. In the days ahead, the crew fly back to Houston, where the physiological and operational data from the mission will be scrutinised.
How the human body responds to the deep-space radiation environment beyond Earth’s magnetic shield is one of the key questions Artemis II was designed to help answer.
