SAN DIEGO (FOX5/KUSI)–Cheers of “USA” filled the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s watch party as the Orion capsule splashed down just after 5:00 p.m. Friday.
It’s a moment that’s captivated the attention of hundreds of people of all ages, take 2-year-old Micah, for example.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a capsule.
“These little holes are called thrusters. That’s how they can control it. Then they come back to earth and they splash into the ocean,” explained his dad.
He and his dad took a stroll around the Air & Space Museum’s space exhibit ahead of the museum’s Artemis II splashdown watch party.
Artemis II Splashdown recap: Orion capsule returns to Earth
“I’ve just had the livestream on a bunch from NASA, and a couple of days ago we popped open Kerbal Space Program, and I built a little rocket with him, and we went to the moon, and he got to watch that whole thing, and we had a lot of fun,” he said.
He said Micah has enjoyed the photos that’ve been snapped.
“He was seeing the texture of it and the craters and things like that. That was a really fun thing for him,” he said.
A combination of the art of photography and the science of space travel is something that also inspired Theo and Nicolae.
“It’s always fun seeing the old photos from the original mission where there’s the woman who wrote all the code, and she’s standing next to the giant pile of all the code printed out, and the technology we had 50 years ago is like what we have in a calculator now,” they said.
The San Diego couple calls the splashdown a once-in-a-lifetime event and says they’re happy they are in the right place at the right time.
“In this day and age, it’s very nice to be excited about what humans are accomplishing.”
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