Artemis II Crew Returns to Houston After 10-Day Lunar Flyby, Setting Distance Record

NASA’s four Artemis II astronauts are back on the ground in Houston after a 10-day trip around the moon, the first time a crew has flown beyond low Earth orbit in more than half a century and now the farthest journey humans have ever made from home.

The crew — Commander G. Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor J. Glover, Mission Specialist Christina H. Koch and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on April 10. U.S. Navy divers and recovery teams stabilized the Orion capsule and helped the astronauts out, following standard recovery procedures.

After routine medical checks on the recovery ship and transport back to shore, the astronauts flew to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. They reunited with their families and joined a welcome event April 11 at Ellington Field, where Koch told the crowd, “Planet Earth, you are a crew.”

The mission, launched April 1 from Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is NASA’s first crewed test flight in the Artemis program. Artemis is the agency’s campaign to return astronauts to the lunar surface and build a sustained presence there, using the Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket; the Orion spacecraft; and future infrastructure such as the planned Gateway space station in lunar orbit.

Artemis II is the first time the SLS rocket and Orion have carried people. The roughly 10-day flight was designed to test life-support, navigation, reentry and recovery systems before later missions attempt moon landings.

During the journey, Orion followed a translunar trajectory on a so-called free-return path, looping around the moon and using gravity to slingshot back toward Earth without requiring a large engine burn to come home. At closest approach, the spacecraft passed about 4,067 miles above the lunar surface.

On April 6, NASA says, the crew surpassed the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, when that mission reached about 248,655 miles from Earth during its aborted moon landing attempt. Artemis II ultimately reached about 252,756 miles (406,745 kilometers) from Earth, the farthest human spaceflight to date and the most distant since the Apollo program.

The flight also carried a series of firsts. It is the first time any crew has traveled beyond low Earth orbit — the region where satellites and the International Space Station orbit — since Apollo 17 in 1972. Koch is the first woman and Glover the first person of color to travel beyond low Earth orbit as part of the Artemis campaign. Hansen, a former fighter pilot, is the first Canadian to make that journey, underscoring Canada’s role as a core partner in Artemis.

Glover previously flew as pilot on SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station. Koch, an engineer and veteran spacewalker, held the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman before Artemis II. Wiseman is a former U.S. Navy pilot and former chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office.

NASA officials have described Artemis II as a successful mission that safely returned its crew and met its primary test objectives. Lori Glaze, a senior NASA official, said after splashdown, “We sent four amazing people to the moon and safely returned them to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years.”

The return to Earth was not entirely glitch-free, but the problems were minor. Mission coverage reported a temporary communications hiccup between Orion and recovery forces around splashdown; contact was restored before the crew exited the capsule, and recovery continued as planned. Earlier in the flight, a transient issue with the spacecraft’s waste-management system, essentially the onboard toilet, was resolved in orbit. NASA has pointed to such life-support quirks as exactly the kind of findings a test flight is meant to surface before longer trips.

Artemis II follows Artemis I, an uncrewed 2022 mission that first tested SLS and Orion around the moon. Data from this crewed flight — especially on Orion’s reentry and heat-shield performance — will inform safety assessments and schedules for later missions, including Artemis IV, which NASA is targeting as a potential first Artemis lunar landing.

Independent reviews, including from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, have warned of schedule risks across the Artemis program. The performance of Artemis II will be one factor in whether NASA can keep its plans on track.

As engineers begin sifting through the mission’s telemetry and hardware data, NASA is also focusing on public outreach. On April 15, the agency released a new episode of its “Curious Universe” podcast, titled “Artemis II Crew Comes Home,” highlighting the astronauts’ reactions to their journey and the end of the mission.

For now, the four crew members are back in Houston, the United States has flown astronauts around the moon again, and NASA has a trove of real-world test results to shape its next steps on the road back to the lunar surface.