Artemis II Astronauts Safely Back on Earth After Historic Trip Around Moon

NASA

The Artemis II Orion capsule splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, on Friday, 10 April 2026.

The Artemis II, and the four astronauts aboard the Orion space capsule, splashed down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Friday night, with all four astronauts in good health.

“53 years ago, humanity left the moon. This time we return to stay. Let us finish what they started. Let us focus on what was left undone. Let us not go to plant flags and leave, but to stay with firmness in our purpose, with gratitude for the hands who built the machines and with love for the ones that we carry with us,” Nasa’s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said at the late-night press conference after the astronauts landed.

The spacecraft touched down at 5:07pm (1:07am BST), bringing its journey around the Moon and back to an official duration of nine days, one hour and 32 minutes. The Orion spacecraft travelled 694,481 miles (1,117,659km), according to Nasa. Despite only just exceeding nine days, the mission will be officially recorded as lasting 10 days, as the day of launch was designated “flight day one”.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch of Nasa, alongside the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, have become the first humans to travel to the Moon and return safely to Earth since the crew of Apollo 17 in December 1972.

They now join an exclusive group of just 24 individuals who have journeyed to the Moon and returned safely to Earth.

As the Orion capsule descended to within 17,000 miles of the Earth’s surface, Wiseman described the planet as it came into view: “There’s a great blue hue to it. It’s beautiful,” he said.

Sean Quinn, Nasa’s Exploration Ground Systems Manager, said he received a phone call from Wiseman while awaiting the start of Friday night’s briefing: “It was wonderful to hear his voice and to be told that all crew members are safe, and that we could confirm the mission’s success. We accomplished what we set out to do.”

Following splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, a recovery team from the USS John P. Murtha was on hand to retrieve the Artemis crew. Personnel approached in small boats and secured an inflatable “porch” to Orion’s hatch. The crew were then assessed by US Navy staff before being transferred by helicopter to the naval vessel.

Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman, speaking from the deck of the USS John P Murtha while waiting for the astronauts to arrive, said of the team: “Our crew members that we’ve all had an opportunity to observe over the last 10 days, they’re absolutely professional astronauts, wonderful communicators, almost poets. These were the ambassadors from humanity to the stars that we sent out there right now.

“This is not a once in a lifetime, which you hear sometimes around here. No, it’s not. This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.

There is a lot to celebrate right now on the mission well accomplished for Artemis II, and at the same time we’ve got to start getting ready for Artemis III.”

Nasa has demonstrated that it can once again safely transport humans to and from cislunar space — the region between the Earth and its nearest celestial neighbour. The agency will now build on the knowledge gained to advance the Artemis programme towards a scheduled crewed lunar landing in 2028, 56 years after the last such mission.

Meanwhile, people around the world appeared to unite in a rare moment of shared experience, captivated by stunning video footage and high-resolution images of the lunar surface, as well as views of Earth from afar. These were accompanied by thoughtful and often deeply moving reflections from astronauts, not typically known for sentimentality, as they described what they were witnessing.

“I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon,” the Nasa astronaut Christina Koch said of her first impressions of Orion’s closest approach on Monday, 4,067 miles (6,545km) above the lunar surface.

“It lasted just a second or two and I actually couldn’t even make it happen again, but something just threw me in suddenly to the lunar landscape and it became real.

“The moon really is its own unique body in the universe. When we have that perspective and we compare it to our home of the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common. Everything we need, the Earth provides, and that, in and of itself, is somewhat of a miracle.”

Christina Koch became the first woman to travel to the Moon and back, in what has been widely described as a mission of milestones. Jeremy Hansen, of the Canadian Space Agency, became the first non-American to undertake such a journey, while Victor Glover, the Artemis II pilot, became the first person of colour to do so.

Together with mission commander Reid Wiseman, the four astronauts travelled farther from Earth than any humans before them, reaching a distance of 252,756 miles — more than 4,000 miles beyond the previous record set by the Apollo 13 crew in April 1970.

The 695,000-mile voyage was not without its challenges. Orion’s toilet system, housed within a capsule roughly the size of a small camper van, malfunctioned on more than one occasion. This required the temporary use of urine collection bags, as well as in-flight repairs carried out by Koch, who briefly assumed the role of onboard plumber.

There were also lighter moments. On Easter Sunday, the crew took part in an improvised egg hunt, searching for packets of dehydrated scrambled eggs concealed around the spacecraft. A plush toy named Rise — the mission’s official mascot, designed by eight-year-old Californian schoolboy Lucas Ye — made regular appearances during crew press conferences.

Perhaps the most emotional moment came on Monday, when the crew proposed dedicating a previously unnamed lunar crater to Carroll Taylor Wiseman, the late wife of the mission commander and mother of their daughters, Katey and Ellie, who died of cancer in 2020. Hansen struggled to deliver the tribute, prompting an emotional response and embraces among the crew.

Alongside these moments, the astronauts carried out critical operational tasks, evaluating Orion’s life-support systems, radiation detectors and next-generation spacesuits, as well as testing procedures essential for future deep-space missions. These efforts will inform Nasa’s longer-term ambitions for the Artemis programme, including plans for a lunar base estimated to cost $20bn and to be constructed within the next decade.

The agency sees the first splashdown of a returning moon crew in more than five decades as an important next step. Although not as visually mesmerizing as the fiery 1 April launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center that sent Artemis II into the heavens, the landing still required a similar level of intricate planning, precision and execution.

Changes to the heat shield after anomalies arose on the uncrewed Artemis I mission of November 2022 gave Nasa confidence that Orion would withstand temperatures up to 5,000F (2,760C) at its 25,000mph re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere; and mission managers selected a steeper, direct path of re-entry to reduce heat stress.

A succession of deployments of Orion’s 11 parachutes at various altitudes was designed to slow the spacecraft to 325mph, then 130mph, before the three main chutes, their canopies stretching a combined 80 yards (73 meters), release for a further deceleration to a 17mph splashdown.

Coast Guard and Nasa recovery crews were positioned to cover a landing zone about 550 miles in diameter. After medical checks following hatch opening and a brief stopover at a San Diego military base, the crew’s next destination is Houston’s Johnson Space Center, which they last saw on 27 March, and a reunion with their families.

Nicky Fox, associate administrator of Nasa’s science mission directorate, summed up the importance and impact of the mission in a briefing with reporters this week.

“Our four Artemis II astronauts, Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, took humanity on an incredible journey around the moon and brought back images so exquisite and brimming with science, they will inspire generations to come,” she said.

Source: The Guardian



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