Artemis II crew returns safely
NASA confirmed completion of the Artemis II lunar mission: the first crewed SLS launch, Orion’s safe lunar orbit and a new human spaceflight distance record before returning to Earth. The agency framed the mission as a milestone for crewed lunar exploration and space‑technology development. (x.com)
NASA’s Artemis II crew is back on Earth after a 10-day flight around the Moon, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off California on April 10. (nasa.gov) NASA said Orion landed at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time near San Diego after launching on April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop the Space Launch System rocket, the first time that booster has carried astronauts. (nasa.gov) The four-person crew was NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. NASA’s mission page lists Artemis II as a 9-day, 1-hour, 32-minute crewed lunar flyby. (nasa.gov) A lunar flyby is a loop around the Moon that uses the Moon’s gravity to send a spacecraft back toward Earth, without landing. NASA used Artemis II to test Orion’s life-support, navigation, communications and reentry systems with people on board before later landing missions. (nasa.gov) The mission also set a new human distance record. NASA said the crew reached 248,655 miles from Earth on April 6, passing the Apollo 13 mark set in 1970. (nasa.gov) Artemis II was the first crewed trip toward the Moon in more than 50 years and the first human mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972. That makes it NASA’s first full test of its post-Apollo deep-space system with astronauts aboard. (nasa.gov) The crew also marked several firsts for a lunar mission crew: Glover is the first Black astronaut assigned to a Moon mission, Koch is the first woman, and Hansen is the first Canadian. NASA announced that lineup in 2023 and flew it on this mission in 2026. (nasa.gov) After splashdown, NASA moved the astronauts to the USS John P. Murtha for medical checks before flying them back to Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA said the crew returned to Houston on April 11 and reunited with their families. (nasa.gov, nasa.gov) NASA is using Artemis II as the crewed test flight that comes before its next lunar missions. The agency says the flight’s data will feed into Artemis III and later missions as it prepares to send astronauts back to the lunar surface. (nasa.gov)
