Artemis II Crew Heads Home After Historic Flight Behind the Moon

Four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft are making their way back to Earth after completing the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, capping a day of milestone after milestone that rewrote the record books for human spaceflight.

NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen swung around the far side of the moon on Monday, April 6, passing within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface at 3,139 mph before slingshotting back toward home. The maneuver plunged the crew into a 40-minute communications blackout, the first time in more than half a century that humans were entirely unreachable from Earth.

Before the blackout began, the crew had already shattered the record for the farthest distance any human has ever traveled from Earth. At 1:57 p.m. ET on Monday, the Orion capsule, which the crew named "Integrity," surpassed the 248,655-mile mark set by Apollo 13 in April 1970 during its emergency return. Artemis II ultimately reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles, beating the Apollo 13 record by more than 4,100 miles.

Speaking from the cabin as the record fell, Hansen delivered a message that looked simultaneously backward and forward. "From the cabin of Integrity, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration," he said. "We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth pulls us back into everything that we hold dear." He closed with a challenge: "We choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived."

The crew's record-breaking day opened with a message from the past. Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, who died in August 2025, had recorded a special wake-up call for the Artemis II crew before his passing. "Welcome to my old neighborhood," Lovell told them. The crew then turned to the work of science, conducting a stream of lunar observations that drew grins and chatter from mission control back on Earth.

The mission launched April 1, 2026, from Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the four astronauts on a planned 685,000-mile, 10-day journey. Retired NASA astronaut Cady Coleman has been among the voices offering perspective on the mission's significance as events have unfolded.

With the lunar flyby now complete, the crew is four days from home. Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, near San Diego, is expected Friday, nine days after launch, bringing to a close the most ambitious crewed test flight NASA has attempted since the Apollo era.