The Artemis II crew at Ellington Airport in Houston on Saturday, April 11 after a successful return to Earth. Photo: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas

The Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Friday, wrapping up a historic nearly 10-day mission that marked the first crewed flight beyond Low-Earth Orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The crew splashdown at 5:07 p.m. PDT with a NASA and U.S. military team recovering the astronauts from the Orion capsule.

The Orion spacecraft performed a series of three burns to achieve the correct trajectory for reentry, with the third burn taking place at 2:53 p.m. earlier on Friday. 

The Artemis II team of astronauts Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Victor Glover of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency launched on a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on April 1. Their journey took them in two elliptical orbits around the Earth and a 24-hour orbit around the Moon. 

The lunar flyby marked the farthest any humans have traveled from Earth, reaching a maximum distance of 252,760 miles from Earth, surpassing the record of the Apollo 13 mission. The crew took observations and captured incredible photos of the lunar surface and a solar eclipse. 

“Artemis II demonstrated extraordinary skill, courage, and dedication as the crew pushed Orion, SLS, and human exploration farther than ever before. 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,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.

This mission was the second in NASA’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon and establish a permanent presence on the Moon. Artemis II’s objective was to test the life support capabilities of the Orion spacecraft as the space agency prepares for planned crewed expeditions to the Moon.

The next Artemis mission, targeted for 2027, will feature a crew capsule will docking with a commercial lunar lander built by either SpaceX or Blue Origin, before the Artemis IV mission to land on the Moon no earlier than 2028. NASA recently added the docking mission to the Artemis lineup in a move to standardize the approach and increase flight rate safety.

“Artemis II proved the vehicle, the teams, the architecture, and the international partnership that will return humanity to the lunar surface. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy carried the hopes of this world farther than humans have traveled in more than half a century. Fifty‑three years ago, humanity left the Moon. This time, we returned to stay. The future is ours to win,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said in a statement.