Ankur Desai

Pacific Time.

From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete.

Integrity's astronauts, back on Earth.

Let's also play you the moment a little earlier when communications were re-established after a very tense six minutes when NASA's mission controllers had no contact with the crew as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

The astronauts are said to be in excellent shape and have now been taken by helicopter to a US Navy ship.

Just after the splashdown was confirmed, I spoke to our science correspondent, Pallab Ghosh.

History's been made and it's been made to perfection.

This mission has so far been flawless.

The tense moment was when the capsule entered the atmosphere.

There were question marks about the heat shield, which didn't function properly during the first test flight of an uncrewed mission three years ago.

So everyone was a bit worried.

Would it work this time with four people on board?

And it did.

We heard...

There were six minutes of silence.

It was excruciating.

This was the time that if anything was going to go wrong, it would go wrong then.

And we were just waiting and waiting to make sure that we heard back from the astronauts.

And we did.

Reid Wiseman said, Houston, we read you loud and clear.