NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down at 5.07 p.m. PDT (1.07 a.m. BST) on Friday off the coast of San Diego, completing a nearly 10-day journey that took them 252,756 miles from home at their farthest distance from Earth.
The crew members returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, 11 April.
During their mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen flew 694,481 miles in total. Their lunar flyby took them farther than any humans have ever travelled before, surpassing the previous distance record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
“The Artemis II crew is home. The entry, descent, and landing systems performed as designed and the final test was completed as intended,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya.
“This moment belongs to the thousands of people across 14 countries who built, tested, and trusted this vehicle. Their work protected four human lives travelling at 25,000 miles per hour and brought them safely back to Earth.
“Artemis II proved the vehicle, the teams, the architecture, and the international partnership that will return humanity to the lunar surface.
“Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy carried the hopes of this world farther than humans have travelled in more than half a century.
“53 years ago, humanity left the Moon. This time, we returned to stay. The future is ours to win.”
With astronauts aboard for the first time, engineers put Orion through a full in-flight evaluation.
The crew tested the spacecraft’s life support systems, confirming Orion can sustain humans in deep space.
During several piloting demonstrations, crew members took manual control of the spacecraft, flying Orion to validate its handling and collect data that will guide future rendezvous and docking operations with human-rated landers during Artemis III and beyond.
The crew completed a series of tests to inform how NASA will fly future missions to the Moon, including evaluations of how the spacecraft operates during crew exercise, emergency equipment and procedures, the Orion crew survival system spacesuits, and other critical spacecraft systems.
Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen also supported scientific investigations to help NASA prepare astronauts to live and work on the Moon as the agency builds a Moon Base and looks toward Mars.
These experiments – including the AVATAR investigation, which studies how human tissue responds to microgravity and the deep space radiation environment, and other human research performance studies – are gathering essential health data for long-duration missions.
During their 6 April lunar flyby, the astronauts captured more than 7,000 images of the lunar surface and a solar eclipse, during which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion’s vantage point.
The imagery includes striking views of earthset and earthrise, impact craters, ancient lava flows, our Milky Way galaxy, and surface fractures and colour variations across the lunar terrain.
They documented the topography along the terminator – the boundary between lunar day and night – where low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface, creating illumination conditions similar to those in the South Pole region where astronauts are scheduled to land in 2028.
The crew also proposed potential names for two lunar craters and reported meteoroid impact flashes on the night side of the Moon.
Artemis II science will pave the way for future missions to the Moon’s surface by helping advance mission operations and training astronauts to use well-informed judgment to identify areas of high interest for science and exploration.
With the crew safely on Earth, NASA and its partners will now turn attention to preparing for next year’s Artemis III mission, when a new Orion crew will test integrated operations with commercially built Moon landers in low Earth orbit.
As part of a “Golden Age of innovation and exploration”, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly challenging missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and lay the groundwork for sending the first astronauts to Mars.
“With Artemis II complete, focus now turns confidently toward assembling Artemis III and preparing to return to the lunar surface, build the base, and never give up the Moon again,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.