Artemis II astronauts safely back on Earth after historic trip around moon

HOUSTON, 11th April, 2026 (WAM) — The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth’s atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after nearly 10 days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the vicinity of the moon in over half a century.

NASA’s gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into calm seas off the Southern California coast shortly after 5:07 pm Pacific Time (0007 GMT on Saturday), concluding a mission that four days prior took the astronauts 252,756 miles away from Earth, deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

The Artemis II flight, travelling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) in two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 4,000 miles from its surface, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to return astronauts to the lunar surface starting in 2028.

The crew’s homecoming was the riskiest test of the mission and its Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft, proving the capsule’s heat shield could withstand the extreme forces of re-entry from a lunar-return trajectory.