Artemis II crew splashes back to Earth. MIT professor explains what it means for space travel.

When Artemis II splashed down Friday evening, it brought back a wealth of information and inspiration.

The mission, largely viewed as a test flight, had a lot riding on it as NASA ramps up its work on the pursuit to Mars.

Richard Binzel is a planetary science professor at MIT and has decades of knowledge in space exploration.

"It's exciting we have humans back in space again," Binzel said about the success of this mission. "It's a real test of a spaceflight system. Surviving reentry and landing safely. That's the real accomplishment here. Showing we can go to the moon but also come back safely."

Needham's own Suni Williams returned from more than nine months in space last summer and said this Artemis mission was critical for the future of space exploration.

"I am so happy for this generation of astronauts to be able to do this and open the door for us to be sustainably on the moon. This is just cracking the door open to that and to lead to so many more discoveries as we pave our way closer and closer to going to Mars," Williams said during CBS News coverage of the splashdown.

Now that the crew of Artemis II is back on Earth, the real work begins for those astronauts on board.

"They have a long road ahead of them in terms of debriefing, going through all the data they collected, explaining it back to mission controls, talking about all the systems on the space craft. Which ones worked well and which ones need to be tweaked," Binzel said.

As for what's next. Artemis III is set to take another four astronauts to space next year. The timeline will be largely set by the results of this most recent mission.