NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, completing humanity’s first crewed journey around the Moon since 1972. The Orion capsule touched down at 5:07 p.m. local time with all four astronauts reported in good health.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch of NASA flew with Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Their return concluded a journey officially recorded as 10 days because launch day counted as flight day one, although elapsed time was nine days, one hour and 32 minutes. NASA reported that Orion traveled about 694,481 miles.
A recovery team from the USS John P. Murtha approached the capsule after landing. An inflatable platform was attached at Orion’s hatch, and Navy personnel assessed the astronauts before they were transferred to the ship by helicopter. The landing closed the first crewed flight of both the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.
Artemis II used a free-return trajectory, making a single loop around the far side of the Moon rather than entering lunar orbit or attempting a landing. During the April 6 flyby, the crew reached 252,756 miles from Earth, more than 4,000 miles beyond the distance record set by Apollo 13. Koch became the first woman to complete a lunar voyage, Hansen the first non-American and Glover the first person of color to travel beyond Earth orbit.
The mission also produced new human observations of the lunar surface. Its closest approach was about 4,067 miles, giving the crew a wider view than Apollo astronauts generally had from low lunar orbit. Astronauts studied selected features, including the Orientale Basin, and observed a total solar eclipse that lasted 54 minutes from their viewpoint.
The flight’s principal purpose was to demonstrate that SLS and Orion could support a crew beyond low Earth orbit. The astronauts evaluated life support, radiation detectors, next-generation spacesuits and other operations needed for later missions. Orion’s toilet malfunctioned more than once, requiring temporary collection bags and repairs by Koch, but the supplied reporting identified no resulting threat to the mission.
For re-entry, Orion followed a steep, direct path selected to reduce heat stress after changes prompted by heat-shield anomalies on the uncrewed Artemis I flight. Eleven parachutes deployed in sequence to slow the capsule. Safe splashdown completed the end-to-end test and gave NASA operational data for more ambitious Artemis flights, including future missions intended to practice docking and eventually land astronauts on the Moon. It also returned the crew safely.
