Artemis II astronauts splash down off California after crewed Moon flyby

The NASA spacecraft carrying four astronauts splashed down as planned Friday off the California coast, capping the U.S. space agency's successful crewed test mission around the Moon, the first such flyby in more than 50 years. The approximately 10-day mission began with a dramatic launch from Florida on April 1 and was considered a key stepping stone toward eventual crewed lunar landings. Artemis II was the first crewed mission of NASA's program aiming to install a sustained presence on the Moon.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman reported that the crewmembers — himself along with Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen — were "stable" and "green" after a brief communications blackout during re-entry. NASA personnel and the U.S. military helped extract the astronauts from the capsule, and helicopters hoisted them one by one from an inflatable raft for the short trip to the Navy’s recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha.

As the astronauts returned to Earth, their spacecraft reached maximum speeds more than 30 times the speed of sound and faced searing temperatures around half as hot as the surface of the Sun. Re-entry was considered one of the most precarious steps of the flight because the capsule comes toward Earth while still traveling more than 30 times the speed of sound, and the process can heat the capsule’s exterior to more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA said the Orion spacecraft entered the Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 25,000 miles per hour.

The return was a key test of the spacecraft’s heat shield after the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022 found that the capsule’s heat shield had returned with pockmarks and cracking. The Artemis II Orion spacecraft had a heat shield nearly identical to the one that flew on Artemis I, and NASA officials said changes were made to the mission’s re-entry strategy. Instead of the “skip” re-entry used on the 2022 test flight, Artemis II attempted more of a “loft” intended to create more favorable heating conditions and limit cracking on the heat shield.

NASA officials said the investigation into the Artemis I heat shield issue, including more than a year of analysis and ground tests, had given the agency confidence that the astronauts would get home safely. Following splashdown, the agency said it would begin evaluating the Artemis II heat shield’s performance immediately upon return. The Artemis II re-entry went off without a hitch and was described during the mission broadcast as a textbook entry and touchdown.

The mission was the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit in more than 50 years and functioned as a critical crewed systems test to validate spacecraft performance and operational procedures. The voyage also set a distance record, with the four astronauts traveling 406,771 kilometers from Earth. Several achievements added to the mission’s historic nature: Glover was the first person of color to fly around the Moon, Koch was the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American.

During the mission, the astronauts took thousands of photographs and witnessed a solar eclipse as well as meteorite strikes on the lunar surface. Artemis II did not land astronauts on the Moon; it placed the Orion spacecraft into a trajectory that included multiple Earth orbits followed by a single flyby of the Moon, passing roughly 6,000 miles above the surface. The mission also included investigations on deep-space radiation and physiological stress, including ARCHeR and AVATAR, as NASA used the flight to gather data critical for future missions.