On April 10, 2026 at 8:07 p.m. Eastern Time, the four astronauts crewed on the Artemis II lunar flyby mission splashed down off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean. At an altitude of 7.6 kilometers, the Orion capsule released its 11 parachutes to slow down to about 30 km/h before the splashdown, where, once in the water, five orange airbags of helium were deployed to maintain the capsule’s upright position and enable the astronauts to emerge onto a large raft dubbed the front porch. From there, they made their way back to Houston’s Johnson Space Center by helicopter, boat, and airplane — ending the historic 10-day Artemis II mission.
When Orion finally descended below 17,000 miles from the planet’s surface, Commander Reid Wiseman would remark on the nearing Earth by saying how “there’s a great blue hue to it” — that “it’s beautiful.”
As it turns out, the process of reentering the atmosphere proved to be Orion’s most distressing test yet — touching it for the first time since launch at 7:53 p.m. at an altitude of approximately 122 kilometers, moving over 38,000 km/m. Briefly after doing so, friction from the atmosphere would heat the Orion heatshield to nearly 2800° Celsius (approximately 5072° Fahrenheit) and create a layer of superheated plasma that would block communication between the crew and mission control for about 6 minutes. The succession of deployments of the capsule’s 11 parachutes was launched at various altitudes designed to slow it from 325 mph and then 130 mph before the initiation of the three main chutes stretching a combined 80 yards (73 meters) to achieve a 17 mph splashdown. After landing in the Pacific Ocean, a USS John P Murtha recovery crew would retrieve the astronauts in boats that were used to approach the Orion’s inflatable porch attached to its hatch — navy personnel assessing the crew before transferring them to the navy ship by helicopter.
The journey around the moon, timed at 9 days, 1 hour, and 32 minutes, brought the four crew members farther into space than any other humans have before at 252,756 miles — more than 4,000 further than the former record set by the Apollo 13 crew in April of 1970. Additionally, it makes the astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen the first to successfully return to Earth from the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, joining the exclusive club of only 24 others who have ever done so. Despite timing just over 9 days, the mission is officially recorded as a 10-day mission due to the blast-off day being treated as “flight day one”. During the mission itself, the team evaluated Orion’s life support systems, radiation detectors, next-generation spacesuits, and tested other operations crucial to future deep-space missions that are set to be launched under the wider plans of the Artemis series that intend to establish a permanent presence on the moon and Mars — the former already having plans of a $20 billion base to be built within a decade.
Currently, it is unclear how this crew will have a role in these future phases of the program, though Wiseman and Hansen are expected to be involved in the training of future mission crews. NASA claims it will begin applying the data gathered from Artemis II such as how the flight hardware and emergency system capabilities performed in preparation for the future of the program.
After the astronauts had returned, a late-night press conference was held to discuss the conclusion of the mission. During this, NASA’s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya would say how “53 years ago, humanity left the moon. This time we return to stay. Let us finish what they started. Let us focus on what was left undone. Let us not go to plant flags and leave, but to stay with firmness in our purpose, with gratitude for the hands who built the machines and with love for the ones that we carry with us.”
Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, would sum up the significance of the mission during a briefing with reporters the week the team returned by noting how “our four Artemis II astronauts, Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, took humanity on an incredible journey around the moon and brought back images so exquisite and brimming with science, they will inspire generations to come.”
