Artemis Crew to Return Home April 10 After 10-Day Lunar Mission

Four astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego Friday evening, closing out NASA's Artemis II mission and marking the first time humans had flown beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen touched down at approximately 8:07 p.m. EDT aboard the Orion spacecraft, which the crew named Integrity. Recovery teams extracted the crew by helicopter and transported them to the USS John P. Murtha, where they underwent initial medical evaluations.

The 10-day mission launched April 1 at 6:35 p.m. EDT from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After a translunar injection burn sent Orion on a free-return trajectory, the crew swung around the far side of the Moon on April 6, losing radio contact with Earth for roughly 40 minutes. At 1:56 p.m. EDT that day, the four astronauts reached 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the farthest distance ever traveled by humans, a record previously held by the crew of Apollo 13 since 1970.

During the communication blackout behind the Moon, the crew paused their scientific observation work. Wiseman told reporters the moment gave them pause. "We had a lot of scientific work to do," he said. "But the four of us took a moment." The spacecraft also passed through a total solar eclipse from the crew's vantage point as the Moon blocked the Sun.

The crew exited the lunar sphere of influence on April 7, beginning the return leg. On Flight Day 9, they reviewed re-entry and splashdown procedures and conducted a return trajectory correction burn. NASA confirmed a small leak in the service module's oxidizer system during the mission but said the issue posed no risk to the crew or the return.

Orion re-entered Earth's atmosphere at roughly 34,965 feet per second before splashdown. The crew had been selected in April 2023 and trained together for three years ahead of the flight.

Artemis II carries direct implications for what comes next. The mission served as a crewed systems test for Orion and the Space Launch System ahead of Artemis III, currently planned for mid-2027, which is designed to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The success of Friday's splashdown keeps that timeline intact.