Kenneth Chang

They have to spend another three days just sitting around waiting to get back to Earth.

This is probably the boring part of the trip.

It's basically, are we there yet?

On the very last day, Earth's gravity is going to be pulling them around Earth, and they'll be on a path to re-enter the atmosphere, and they'll splash down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.

They'll be plucked out of the ocean, taken to a ship, and then flown back to shore where they'll be checked out by doctors.

And then they'll get to fly back to Houston.

And that will be the end of Artemis II.

You're right, Michael.

This is old-school NASA, where NASA designed and operated their very spacecraft.

And it'll be a triumph for them in that the old ways of doing things succeeded.

But on the very next mission, Artemis III, the new space companies, SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, and Blue Origin succeeded.

started by Jeff Bezos, they become involved because SpaceX and Blue Origin are producing the lunar landers that are eventually going to take astronauts to the surface of the moon.

In a sense, yes.

The expectation is this will be the last big NASA spacecraft and rockets.

In the future, there will be much more work from private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

But if you think back to the 1960s when we went to the moon for the first time, that was a turbulent era, especially the year 1968.

Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

The country was mired in the Vietnam War.

The Democratic Convention in Chicago was beset by riots.