It worked !

.

Billions of dollars spent but the can with no spam came back A-OK on 2022-12-12.  Although some parts of the mission didn't work (some of the cubesat batteries may have aged out over the delays ?) or were weird (phantom breaker trips) the overall mission hit almost all of their goals !

Here is an overview and comment on Artemis 1 by Eric Berger at Ars Technica:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/after-decades-of-false-starts-nasa-really-is-returning-to-the-moon-this-time/

And another article about the heat shield test and the skipping stone landing trajectory by Marina Koren in the Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/12/nasa-orion-spacecraft-returns-from-moon/672433/

I managed to see the last view seconds of the splashdown looking up at the parachutes and then boosh into the water.

Now to wait until 2025 before the Artemis 2 mission which will be similar to this mission except with astronauts.  But when they do go back I bet we see lots of pictures like this:

Orion selfie, close approach on the return to earth

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm