ET Orion was safely bobbing like an oversize, multibillion-dollar cork amid the whitecaps off the coast of Guadalupe Island, awaiting recovery by a contingent of NASA and U.S. Navy personnel.ET on November 16, NASA’s orange-hued SLS rocket roared to life and blazed into the sky, illuminating Florida’s Space Coast in an artificial dawn.“We continue to build that confidence that this is our deep-space human transportation system, and it is meeting or exceeding expectations across the board.” Perhaps the most serious problem during the mission occurred on the ground in the first weekend of December, when the Goldstone radio telescope that is the backbone of NASA’s Deep Space Network went offline, preventing communication with the spacecraft for a number of hours.The launch facility at Kennedy Space Center also sustained some unexpected damage as the SLS leaped from the pad, with shockwaves and exhaust plumes battering the mobile launch structure and blowing the doors off the elevators.“The fact that it’s working so well tells us that we have a system that is ready to go, and I’m guessing that they will come to the conclusion that it’s going to be safe to put humans on the next one.” Problematic Payloads Although Artemis I achieved its primary objectives—to demonstrate Orion’s capability in deep space and successfully return the spacecraft to Earth—some of the mission’s lower-priority secondary tasks produced decidedly mixed results."