{"id":245075,"date":"2026-04-11T12:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T12:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/245075\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T12:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T12:52:10","slug":"it-was-a-perfect-landing-families-cheer-while-gathered-at-ut-arlington-planetarium-as-artemis-ii-splashes-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/245075\/","title":{"rendered":"“It was a perfect landing.” Families cheer while gathered at UT Arlington Planetarium as Artemis II splashes down"},"content":{"rendered":"

At UT Arlington, the splashdown<\/a> played out live inside the university’s planetarium. The watch party drew people from across the metroplex, including plenty of students. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mansfield ISD 7th Grader Elyse Pinkston has been following the Artemis II mission in school.<\/p>\n

“They had told us that they were going to circle the moon and come back, and that’s what made me interested,” she said. “I was waiting to see.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

She didn’t want to miss the chance to watch Friday’s splashdown live inside the UT Arlington Planetarium.<\/p>\n

Before witnessing the astronauts make it through a six-minute blackout period, there were some heart-pounding moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elyse’s mom said the precision of it all stood out the most.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They were like it will last six minutes and, on the dot, and it did, it’s just wild that we know that much information,” Charmaine Pinkston said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then came the splashdown, and the room broke out into applause.<\/p>\n

“It was amazing,” Arlington Resident Tim Sneed said. “It was a perfect landing. I think Gen X kids growing up and watching – it was really good to see a successful mission.”<\/p>\n

“It was just really inspiring, you know,” Charmaine Pinkston said. “It almost makes you want to cry, and I don’t even know these people, but it feels like we did something big.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I was really hoping that they came down safely, and I was thinking that it’s wild how we’ve made it to the moon before and how they’re going to do it again,” Elyse Pinkston said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Elyse Pinkston, this moment is just the beginning.<\/p>\n

She’s looking forward to what comes next, the chance to see astronauts return to the moon.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At UT Arlington, the splashdown played out live inside the university’s planetarium. The watch party drew people from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[150,62457,581,39294,1911,3951,122,27,29,28,4428],"class_list":{"0":"post-245075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-artemis-program","10":"tag-dallas-county","11":"tag-moon","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-tarrant-county","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-texas-headlines","17":"tag-texas-news","18":"tag-ut-arlington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}