Artemis II safely splashes down

What to know about Artemis II's splashdown return: NASA's Artemis II astronauts returned to Earth from their moon mission on Friday with a splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego, after making a high-speed reentry through the atmosphere. The Orion capsule carried a crew of four — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — back to Earth after a nine-day mission that set a record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from our planet. Navy recovery crews brought the astronauts to the USS John P. Murtha for medical checks before they were slated to helicopter back to land.   11:15 PM NASA officials all smiles after successful Artemis II mission NASA officials were all smiles in their post-splashdown news conference Friday night from Houston, with exploration ground systems program manager Shawn Quinn describing Artemis II's successful return to Earth as an "an incredible end to an incredible mission." "It's good to be NASA, it's good to be an American today," Quinn said. Howard Hu, Orion program manager, told reporters: "We're going to learn from this mission, we're going to look at the data, and we're going to move forward. This is the start of a new era of space exploration." And Dr. Lori Glaze, deputy associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development, declared: "This is our first mission to the moon of many more to come." By Faris Tanyo…