Artemis II astronauts splash down safely
NASA’s Artemis II crew completed a successful splashdown and the four astronauts — Christina Koch, Victor Glover Jr., Jeremy Hansen and Reid Wiseman — exited the Orion capsule without incident. The return marks a major operational milestone for Artemis and NASA’s human‑spaceflight schedule. (x.com)
A Moon mission does not end when the astronauts see Earth again. It ends when a 16.5-foot Orion capsule hits the Pacific under parachutes, floats upright, and the recovery team gets four people out safely without turning the spacecraft into a problem of its own. (nasa.gov) That part worked on April 10, 2026, when Orion splashed down at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time off San Diego after a mission NASA lists at 9 days, 1 hour, and 32 minutes. The crew then exited onto an inflatable platform known as the “front porch” before helicopters moved them to the USS John P. Murtha. (nasa.gov) Artemis II was the first time NASA sent people around the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972. This flight was not a landing mission; it was a crewed test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft on the full trip out to lunar distance and back. (nasa.gov) The four seats were filled by Reid Wiseman as commander, Victor Glover as pilot, Christina Koch as mission specialist, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency as mission specialist. Hansen became the first non-American assigned to a lunar mission, and Glover became the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon. (nasa.gov) Orion is built for deep space, which means it has to handle a return much faster and hotter than a low-Earth-orbit capsule. NASA says Artemis II used the spacecraft to test life-support hardware, communications, navigation, and manual flying with a crew aboard in the actual deep-space environment. (nasa.gov) The mission also went farther from Earth than any humans had gone before. NASA said the crew reached 248,655 miles from Earth on April 6, 2026, breaking the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, and later reported a farthest distance of 252,756 miles from home. (nasa.gov, nasa.gov) That record matters less as a stunt than as a systems check. A lunar flyby forces the spacecraft to work for days outside Earth orbit, swing through the Moon’s gravity, and then hit the narrow corridor for re-entry that lets the heat shield survive and the parachutes deploy on time. (nasa.gov, nasa.gov) NASA’s Artemis plan uses this mission as the dress rehearsal before trying to put astronauts near the lunar surface on Artemis III. Getting four people home in good shape, recovering Orion at sea, and handing the capsule back for post-flight analysis is how the program moves from a test flight to the next step on the schedule. (nasa.gov, nasa.gov)
