After nearly 10 days circling the moon — passing in front of an eclipse and traveling farther from Earth than any humans before them — the four-person Artemis II crew returned to Earth in a dramatic Pacific splashdown.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, joined by Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, were inside the Orion capsule when it landed in the ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. Friday. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha was positioned nearby to assist the crew after splashdown.
To rejoin the planet safely, the capsule endured extreme heating of roughly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit and slowed from about 25,000 miles per hour — more than 30 times the speed of sound — to a final descent speed near 19 mph. That roughly 13-minute plunge from the top of the atmosphere to the sea has been described by crew members as like “riding a fireball” through the air, a violent but necessary part of getting home.
Victor Glover emphasized the importance of the return, noting that while many dramatic moments of the mission were visible from orbit, the scientific and technical data the crew brings back are essential. During the mission, the quartet looped around the far side of the moon on April 6, photographing and observing the lunar surface; those images and observations will now be handed off to the teams on the ground.
The successful recovery concludes a milestone test flight for NASA’s Artemis program and marks a new human distance record beyond Earth. Reporting contributions were provided by Nell Greenfieldboyce and Central Florida Public Media’s Brendan Byrne.