They are back home.
On Saturday, April 11 (Manila time), the group of four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and astronaut Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) made their splash down.
The said activity, which comes at the conclusion of their historic and record-setting 10-day journey to the Moon, saw them made it back safely to Earth off the coast of San Diego, California, USA.
After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts were met by a combined NASA and U.S. military team that assisted them out of the spacecraft in open water and transported them via helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checkouts.
The crew members are expected to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Sunday, April 12 (Manila time).
The team members are considered as the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century and were part of the Artemis II test flight that took them 252,756 miles at their farthest distance from Earth.
During their mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen flew 694,481 miles in total, with their lunar flyby making record by bringing them farther than any humans have ever traveled before, surpassing the previous distance record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
“Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, welcome home, and congratulations on a truly historic achievement,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a statement published on its website.
“Artemis II demonstrated extraordinary skill, courage, and dedication as the crew pushed Orion, SLS (Space Launch System), and human exploration farther than ever before,” he continued. “As the first astronauts to fly this rocket and spacecraft, the crew accepted significant risk in service of the knowledge gained and the future we are determined to build.“
The NASA chief also acknowledged the contributions of the entirety of the agency’s workforce, their international partners, whose expertise and commitment, he said, were essential to this mission’s success.
“With Artemis II complete, focus now turns confidently toward assembling Artemis III and preparing to return to the lunar surface, build the base, and never give up the Moon again,” he furthered.
The first Artemis crew launched last April 1 at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the first day in space, the astronauts and teams on the ground checked out the spacecraft, called Integrity, to confirm all systems were healthy ahead of the transit to the Moon. NASA also deployed four CubeSats from international partners to Earth orbit.
On the second day of the test flight, the Orion’s service module fired its main engine, placing the astronauts on a trajectory that brought them 4,067 miles above the lunar surface at their closest approach.
“The Artemis II crew is home. The entry, descent, and landing systems performed as designed and the final test was completed as intended. This moment belongs to the thousands of people across fourteen countries who built, tested, and trusted this vehicle. Their work protected four human lives traveling at 25,000 miles per hour and brought them safely back to Earth,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya.
The official also noted that Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy “carried the hopes of this world farther than humans have traveled in more than half a century,” adding how fifty‑three years ago, humanity left the Moon and this time, humans returned to stay.
The astronauts also tested spacecraft’s life support systems, confirming Orion can sustain humans in deep space. The crew also completed a series of tests to inform how NASA will fly future missions to the Moon, including evaluations of how the spacecraft operates during crew exercise, emergency equipment and procedures, the Orion crew survival system spacesuits, and other critical spacecraft systems.
The team also investigated how could astronauts to live and work on the Moon as the agency builds a Moon Base and looks toward Mars.
During their April 6 lunar flyby, the astronauts captured more than 7,000 images of the lunar surface and a solar eclipse, during which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion’s vantage point.
The imagery also includes the earthset and earthrise, impact craters, ancient lava flows, the Milky Way galaxy, and surface fractures and color variations across the lunar terrain.
They documented the topography along the terminator—the boundary between lunar day and night—where low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface, creating illumination conditions similar to those in the South Pole region where astronauts are scheduled to land in 2028.
Furthermore, the crew also proposed potential names for two lunar craters and reported meteoroid impact flashes on the night side of the Moon.
NASA and its partners now turn their attention to preparations for next year’s Artemis III mission, when a new Orion crew will test integrated operations with commercially built Moon landers in low Earth orbit.
