They’re Home! Artemis II is Back on Earth
The Artemis II crew is back on Earth after the first trip around the Moon since 1972. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down off the coast of California at 8:07:27 pm EDT.
The international crew traveled a total of 694,481 miles (1,117,658 kilometers) between liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center on April 1 and splashdown this evening. Mission elapsed time was 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes and 15 seconds.
Their journey on the Orion capsule they named Integrity took them around the Moon, further than any humans have traveled before — 252,760 miles (406,778 kilometers). That surpassed the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 of 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers). Their main assignment was testing out Orion’s systems, but they also conducted detailed scientific observations of the Moon, the Earth, and the cosmos, sending back stunning images like these.
Artemis II is the first crewed mission in the Artemis program, which was initiated by President Trump in his first term. At the time, the goal was to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024. Delays in getting the Space Launch System rocket, Orion crew capsule, SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System, and Axiom Space lunar spacesuits ready have pushed that to 2028, but this flight is the beginning of NASA’s goal of sustained lunar exploration with commercial and international partners.
We posted an update after this evening’s press conference.
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