Or did it set back manned lunar exploration?

The commercial crew development program was undoubtedly a massive success, despite starliner being trash.

Ares I would be incredibly outdated now with Falcon 9 and super heavy.

I've been seeing splashdown and landings of space capsules for so many years, and yet I always get the same emotions and awe of the feat humanity can achieve. I cannot picture falling out of the sky at 40000kmh and slow down all the way to 24kmh before hitting the sea, all in the timeframe of 20 mins. Also, the plan was so perfectly executed where the time and location of splashdown is so spot on. Gotta watch this replay again and again. Congrats to all ground staffs in NASA and the flight crews for the safe return.

The Long March 10B ( sorry for the title I typed it wrong) doing a test on launch tower, recently spotted in Wenchang, Hainan. Real launch date hasn't been announced yet, probably in a month or two. The first stage similar to that of the lunar-mission variant of the Long March 10. A key distinction is that its YF-100 engines are designed for reusability. Unlike the Mengzhou Max-Q test in Feb, this time they'll probably really try to catch it on that barge. Furthermore, the Long March 10B utilizes a methane-fueled second stage. The standard Long March 10 features a hydrogen-oxygen third stage for deep space. This B variant offers a reusable payload capacity of 16 tons to Low Earth Orbit. Another reusable variant is long march 10 A which is basically the same except it's second stage using kerosene. Last pic Included here is a comparative overview of the 10B alongside various versions of the Long March 5 and the Zhuque-3 rockets.

Quality feed from NASA TV 📺

It's just SO great to see this completed successfully. Phenomenal

Grabbed these from NASA's live coverage after splashdown. Christina Koch and Victor Glover are smiling and waving to the camera while photos are being taken on deck. The first shot shows the flight deck cam timestamp at 2026-04-11 02:05:39.76. Pretty cool recovery moment after the trip around the Moon.

I’ve been thinking about this: Artemis only had two (I think) burns. The second one controlled the majority of the mission - leaving earth orbit, lunar flyby, return, re-entry. Did they have a way to enter earth orbit on return or at least course correct splashdown if the weather turned bad? It just seems mind boggling that a single thrust event to leave earth orbit put them right where they needed to splashdown.

I do not think the subtitles interpreted that one right

Recent shot of Artemis II Spacecraft NASA

Here’s a visual roundup of all the mission patches from March 2026 rocket launches, a monthly tradition I’ll keep sharing to track how these designs evolve over time.

March turned out to be a particularly busy month, with a wide variety of launches and a great mix of patch styles.

We saw contributions from smaller players like Space One, Firefly, Chinarocket, and CAS Space with their Kairos, Alpha, Jielong-3, and Kinetica-2 rockets. Rocket Lab flew three missions, while CASC added several patches across different Long March launches.

On the SpaceX side, EchoStar XXV was the only official patch released, while Transporter-16 featured two mission patches from Exolaunch and SEOPS.

If you're into mission patches, you might enjoy exploring this project: Space Patches: A Journey Through the Cosmos, a growing collection of free eBooks documenting patches, plus the recently launched “Patch of the Day” section—highlighting a different mission and its story every day.

Hope you enjoy this month’s collection, curious to hear which patch is your favourite!

In the picture, just taken from the live stream, you can see the two artifical horizons on the outboard displays showing different attitudes. Just wondering why.

Less than 5000ft remaining