NASA's Orion spacecraft and its four-member crew successfully returned to Earth after a record-setting lunar flyby. The Orion spacecraft, which exceeded 25,000 mph and 5,000-degree temperatures while hurtling through Earth’s atmosphere, successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. The mission, named Artemis II, completed all major goals including setting a new distance record for human space travel on a route that took the crew past the moon, over 252,000 miles from Earth. The crew traveled nearly 700,000 total miles on its journey. The successful splashdown marks the end of the second mission of the Artemis program, a NASA effort to increase the frequency of manned space missions and set the stage for a future manned mission to Mars. New NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has announced accelerated plans to build a lunar base near the moon's south pole with a $20 billion budget over the next seven years.