NASA Astronauts Splash Down After Historic Moon Flyby, Agency Declares Mission a Success

Four astronauts are back on Earth after the first crewed lunar mission in 53 years — and NASA is already building the rocket that goes back to stay.

Four NASA astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on April 10, 2026, ending the 10-day Artemis II mission that carried the first American crew to the vicinity of the moon since 1972 and broke a 56-year-old deep-space distance record set during the Apollo 13 emergency.

The Orion spacecraft, designated Integrity, hit the water at 5:07 p.m. PDT off the coast of San Diego, completing a mission that NASA called a full validation of the Space Launch System and Orion vehicle. The crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — was recovered by the USS John P. Murtha within minutes of splashdown.

Recovery crews in inflatable boats reached the capsule immediately after it came to rest. The four astronauts were extracted and moved to a staging area on an inflatable raft called the “front porch,” then hoisted by winch into two MH-60S Seahawk helicopters from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23 and flown directly to the deck of the Murtha. Aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, they underwent post-mission medical evaluations to monitor re-adaptation to gravity and assess any deconditioning from the 10-day deep-space flight.

Orion — with a mass of approximately 19,000 pounds — was too heavy for the helicopter-lift methods used during the Mercury and Gemini programs. Navy divers from Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 1 attached a winch line to the capsule and pulled it into a specially designed cradle inside the Murtha’s well deck.

The mission’s most gripping moment came six days earlier. On April 6, at 1:56 p.m., the crew reached a distance of 252,756 miles — 406,771 kilometers — from Earth, breaking the record for the farthest humans have ever traveled into space, a mark set by the Apollo 13 crew during their aborted lunar mission in 1970. During the lunar far-side flyby, the spacecraft passed approximately 4,700 miles behind the moon, using lunar gravity to slingshot back toward Earth at 24,500 mph.

That same day, Commander Wiseman and his crew used a radio ceremony to name a small lunar crater “Carroll,” after Wiseman’s wife, a neonatal nurse who died from cancer in 2020. Mission Specialist Hansen made the formal request because Wiseman was reported to be too emotional to speak.

Glover made history as the first person of color to travel beyond low-Earth orbit. Koch became the first woman to participate in a lunar mission. Hansen, a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, was the first non-American to travel to the vicinity of the moon — a role tied directly to Canada’s strategic contribution of the Canadarm3 to the Artemis program.

Re-entry was the mission’s highest-risk phase. Integrity hit the upper atmosphere at 24,664 mph — roughly 40 times faster than a commercial jet — subjecting the crew to deceleration forces of up to 3.9 Gs. The capsule’s 16.5-foot heat shield absorbed temperatures reaching 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. A six-minute communications blackout at an altitude of 400,000 feet was planned and expected. After the blackout, two 23-foot drogue parachutes deployed at 22,000 feet, followed by three main parachutes at 6,000 feet, slowing the capsule from 325 mph to less than 20 mph at splashdown.

The Space Launch System performed with high precision throughout the mission. The RS-25 engines on the Block 1 core stage produced thrust within 0.5 percent of pre-flight predictions, and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage executed an 18-minute translunar injection burn — a record duration for an RL10 engine — pushing Integrity past 22,000 mph on its way to the moon.

With the mission complete, NASA announced a restructured architecture for the next phase of the Artemis program. Artemis III, originally planned as the first lunar landing, has been redesigned as a 2027 orbital docking rehearsal in low-Earth orbit. The landing objective moves to Artemis IV, now targeted for early 2028. “With Artemis II complete, focus now turns confidently toward assembling Artemis III and preparing to return to the lunar surface, build the base, and never give up the Moon again,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said. The agency will standardize the SLS Block 1 configuration to increase launch cadence, with the goal of cutting turnaround time between missions to under 12 months.

“Entry, descent, and landing systems performed as designed and the final test was completed as intended,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said. The agency is moving toward a phased approach to building a permanent lunar base, prioritizing surface power generation and pressurized rovers to enable crewed missions to the lunar surface every six months.

The mission also served as a platform for the AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation — a study using USB-sized “organ chips” containing living cells derived from the astronauts themselves. The chips, seeded with bone marrow cells, were exposed to galactic cosmic rays and solar flares beyond Earth’s magnetic field throughout the 10-day flight. Dr. Donald Ingber of the Wyss Institute at Harvard, the principal investigator, stated that the technology allows for personalized risk assessments that were previously impossible. The space-flown chips will be compared against Earth-based controls and pre- and post-flight blood samples from the crew to develop countermeasures for future long-duration Mars missions.

At Kennedy Space Center, the crawler-transporter is currently moving the mobile launcher back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, marking the start of Artemis III assembly.