NC State students cheer Christina Koch’s Artemis II splashdown return

NC State students cheered from Talley Student Union as alum Christina Koch came home from Artemis II, a 9-day, 1 hour and 32-minute mission that ended with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego at 5:07 p.m. PDT, 8:07 p.m. EDT, on April 10, 2026.

The return carried extra weight in Raleigh because Koch is not just an astronaut passing through a historic mission. She is a three-time NC State graduate, and NASA says she earned bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and physics, along with a master’s degree in electrical engineering, from the university in North Carolina’s capital city. For students watching in Talley, the mission was a reminder that the path from classroom to the front edge of space exploration can run straight through Wake County.

NASA described Artemis II as its first crewed lunar flyby in 50 years. The Orion spacecraft carried Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. The agency said the flight, which launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center, was meant to test deep space systems and help pave the way for future Moon landings.

At NC State, that national milestone felt personal. Students gathered at the university’s hub of student life, where Talley Student Union can host up to 1,200 guests in its grand ballroom, to watch the final moments of the mission together. The scene linked a global spaceflight achievement to a campus that has long tied its identity to engineering, science and research. Koch’s return, after a trip around the moon and back to Earth, gave that connection a face students could recognize and a career path they could picture.

The broader message reached beyond the watch party. NASA has framed Artemis as a program designed not only to return astronauts to the Moon, but also to inspire the next generation of explorers. In Wake County, that aim landed in practical terms: NC State is sending graduates into nationally significant work, and one of its own just completed the first human trip around the moon in more than half a century.