The Artemis II crew safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday evening, concluding a nearly 10-day mission and marking the first human journey to the Moon in more than half a century.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, were safely extracted from the Orion spacecraft, according to NASA.
Following the splashdown, US Navy helicopters transported the crew to the USS John P. Murtha ship. The astronauts will now undergo post-mission medical evaluations before returning to shore and boarding a flight to Johnson Space Center.
The astronauts completed the parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m.
It was a triumphant homecoming for the four astronauts whose record-breaking lunar flyby revealed not only swaths of the moon's far side never seen before by human eyes but a total solar eclipse.
Artemis II also set a new record for the farthest distance traveled by humans in space, reaching 252,756 miles (406,771 km) from Earth while navigating beyond the Moon’s far side. This surpasses the previous record set by Apollo 13, which reached 248,655 miles from Earth.
The mission began with the launch of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 pm on April 1.
The last time NASA and the US Defence Department teamed up for a lunar crew's reentry was Apollo 17 in 1972.
