To the moon & back: Artemis II crew splashes down safely

NASA’s Artemis II crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. ET Friday, concluding a historic 10-day lunar mission and marking humanity’s first return to the vicinity of the moon since 1972.

Mission Control called it “a perfect bullseye splashdown” as the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, settled into the water roughly 40 to 50 miles off the San Diego coast. NASA pinpointed the total mission time at 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes and 15 seconds.

The mission began with liftoff from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. ET, sending the first humans toward the moon since the Apollo era. During the mission, the crew set a record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth (252,756 miles) on April 6.

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist onboard launches on the Artemis II mission, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis II mission will take Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back aboard their Orion spacecraft. The quartet launched at 6:35 p.m. EDT, from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. (Photo courtesy of NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Re-entry posed unique risks for this mission. The Orion heat shield, the critical layer protecting the crew from extreme temperatures, carried known design flaws, prompting NASA to plan a modified re-entry path in which the capsule descended faster and at a steeper angle to minimize exposure to peak heat. As Orion slammed into the atmosphere, air in front of the capsule compressed and heated to temperatures of approximately 2,700 degrees Celsius before a sequence of 11 parachutes slowed the spacecraft to roughly 20 miles per hour for splashdown.

Wiseman radioed Mission Control after splashdown that all four crew members were doing well.

Among the mission’s most emotionally resonant moments came during a space-to-ground news conference earlier this week. Hansen revealed that he and fellow crew members Koch and Glover had chosen to name a lunar crater “Carroll” in honor of Wiseman’s wife, who died of cancer in 2020. Wiseman’s crewmates could be seen wiping away tears as Hansen shared the dedication.

“That was an emotional moment for me, and I just thought that was just a total treasure,” Wiseman said.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft with Artemis II crewmembers NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist aboard is seen under parachutes as it lands in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, Friday, April 10, 2026. NASA’s Artemis II mission took Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen on a nearly 10-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth. Following a splashdown at 8:07 p.m. EDT, NASA, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force teams are working to bring the crewmembers and Orion spacecraft aboard USS John P. Murtha. (Photo courtesy of NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Glover described the mission’s most unexpected highlight as a solar eclipse visible from the far side of the moon on April 6. “We saw great simulations made by our lunar science team, but when that actually happened, it just blew us all away,” he said. “It seemed to be a consolation, and it was one of the greatest gifts of that part of the mission.”

Following splashdown, recovery teams retrieved the crew, assisted them onto an inflatable raft, and used helicopters to deliver them to the USS John P. Murtha, where they will undergo post-mission medical evaluations before traveling to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Artemis II’s mission objectives closely paralleled those of Apollo 8 in 1968, the first crewed lunar flight of the Apollo program, though its free-return trajectory more closely resembled that of Apollo 13 in 1970. The mission serves as a critical test flight ahead of Artemis III, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

The Daily Planet’s Daniel Sanchez spoke with former NASA flight director John Curry, who shared with us the most important things he’s learned, what it will take to co-exist on the moon, and if humanity can live in space in our lifetime.