NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Friday, April 10, 2026, completing a nearly ten-day mission that took them around the Moon and set a new record for the farthest distance humans have travelled from Earth. According to NASA’s official mission release, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were recovered from the Orion spacecraft and transported by helicopter to a U.S. Navy ship for initial post-flight assessments.
Mission Profile
The mission launched on April 1, 2026, from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Space Launch System rocket, according to NASA. The spacecraft completed a free-return trajectory around the Moon, with the crew reaching a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth during the lunar flyby on April 6. NASA stated that the figure surpasses the prior record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.
Re-Entry and Recovery
NASA’s mission blog reported that the Orion spacecraft executed its final return correction burn earlier in the day on April 10 before performing a skip-entry through the atmosphere and deploying its parachutes for splashdown. NASA recovery teams, working with the U.S. Navy, conducted the post-splashdown extraction of the four crew members.
Crew Return to Houston
In a follow-up mission blog post on April 11, NASA stated that the four astronauts had been flown to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they were reunited with family members. NASA indicated that the agency will conduct post-flight medical evaluations and debriefs as it begins reviewing data collected during the mission.
Significance for the Artemis Program
NASA describes Artemis II as the first crewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System combination beyond low Earth orbit. The agency has stated that data from the mission will inform planning for Artemis III, the program’s first planned crewed lunar landing.